FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM “He explains that he still lives with his parents and does not have a job.” Yair Netanyahu is being questioned as a witness by police investigating his father Benjamin, who is currently on trial for corruption.
The eldest son of the longest-serving head of government in Israel’s history – almost sixteen years in all – actually has a job: he is the shadow advisor for the conservative leader’s very flashy media strategies, he is the one who put together the gears of the digital machine that the Likud leader is filming in the election campaign and which has not stopped during these days of the military campaign.
Yair has not lived with his parents at their residence in Jerusalem since the summer. In August he was in Puerto Rico as a guest of a cryptocurrency billionaire, but these 37 days of the conflict against Hamas he is spending in Miami, although at 32 he would be old enough to join the reservists, he was doing his mandatory military service Office military spokesman.
He also lends his voice to his father’s political survival from afar: The Jerusalem Post newspaper has republished the data collected by a media analysis site. Yair does not speak out in the most visible places (X, Instagram), but rather uses his Telegram profile to distance his father from any responsibility related to the October 7 disaster and to try to pin it on military or intelligence leaders.
Local newspapers revealed in the spring that his parents had suggested he take a long vacation abroad and also treat him to Israelis, who were flooded with thousands of his messages on various platforms. The electronic press blackout following a tirade against the Foreign Ministry was accused by the most prominent brothers – the younger Avner has withdrawn – of manipulating the demonstrations against the far-right coalition’s anti-democratic justice plan. Some of his interventions have already been condemned for libel: when Benny Gantz was in opposition and not yet sitting with his father in the limited war council, Yair spread the name of the woman who was allegedly the mistress of the former head of the United States staff and lost in court .
Now the man seen as a possible heir to the leadership of Israel’s far right says he has applied for a work visa in the United States but fears it will be rejected because of his past attacks on the American government.