Opinion // Netanyahu Jr. Refuses to Pick Up Dog Poop, Then Claws at His Critics

Netanyahu, Jr. and the dog Kaya Marc Israel Sellem and Mati Stern/US Embassy

The prime minister’s son Yair Netanyahu has a message for members of the “Israel Destruction Fund and their metastases.”

Among the opponents and critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there is a group that argues that, for a variety of reasons, it’s not appropriate for the prime minister’s son Yair to be the subject of public comment. I understand them, but I totally disagree.

After all, with their unbelievable chutzpah, Yair’s parents, the imperial couple, has been trying in recent years to pave the way for him, their elder son, as the natural heir to the throne. They push him to attend public events and inject his presence at meetings where he doesn’t belong and involve him in work involving public diplomacy. 

Yair Netanyahu's Facebook post

The result is that, just like his mother, Sara, Netanyahu Jr. is up to his neck in affairs of state. Like Sara Netanyahu, Yair also costs the Israeli taxpayer money, a lot of money. We’re dealing here, it should be remembered, with a 25-year-old parasite who doesn’t earn a living and lives at the official Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem at government expense, including the services of caregivers and personal transportation around the clock. 

Recently it has looked like Netanyahu Jr. has been out of control. Like his father and even more so his mother, he’s not at his best under pressure. Even in the past, there have been reports that he has had uncontrolled fits of rage. The apple, it turns out, doesn’t fall far from the tree. A neighbor posted Facebook post over her chance encounter with him, in which she said she caught Yair Netanyahu failing to pick up the droppings of his dog, Kaya, and that he then gave the neighbor the finger when she complained about it. 

In addition, a critical post about him on the Hebrew language Facebook page of the Molad Center’s website, which describes itself as a site providing critical material to the Israeli public on socioeconomic issues and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drove him crazy. The post appeared on Sunday, and featured factual information under the title “Five things that you didn’t know about the heir to the throne, Yair Netanyahu.” 

Yair Netanyahu exploded and decided to post his response directly on the Facebook page using his personal Facebook profile, in which he calls himself Yair Hun, in homage to the original last name of his mother’s father, Shmuel Ben-Artzi, before he Hebraicized it. Yair Netanyahu’s post merits quoting in full, not for the gutter-level thuggery that he demonstrates, but because it provides a rare glimpse into the darkest depths. This, it turns out, is family setting in which the prime minister works. These are the dark ideas that bubble up there. But first the untouched text of the comment:

The Netanyahus and KayaPM's facebook page

“Hi 61. I will not relate to all of the lies and slander. But how nice it is that your side is always driving people up the wall over incitement, demonization, character assassination and the crossing of red lines. What about some kind of exposé on the various and sundry (and foreign) sources of funding of those running this crazy page? What about some kind of exposé about “the son of us all” of Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon who went to prison? What about some kind of exposé about “the son of us all” of Prime Minster [Ehud] Olmert, his interesting relations with a Palestinian man and its significance for the security of the country? Or “the son of us all” of Prime Minister [Shimon] Peres, who killed a soldier through the accidental discharge of a bullet and that the matter was played down? In the spirit of the current period, I have a message for all of the members of the Israel Destruction Fund and their metastases.” 

The comment was followed by an emoji giving the finger along with a smiling pile of excrement emoji. 

So what do we have here? Scathing attacks on two dead prime ministers (Sharon and Peres) and wailing mention of incidents from the past involving their sons’ alleged treatment with kid gloves by the media. That’s despite the fact that Ariel Sharon’s son Omri was put on trial and served his sentence in a case that the media gave extensive coverage to. When it comes to the tragic incident involved Yoni Peres during his military service, it was made public only because of an exposé by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. 

The Netanyahus and KayaPM's facebook page

There are also veiled and dark hints regarding the son of another prime minister, Ehud Olmert. In this case, it doesn’t involve the Netanyahu Jr.’s “interesting relations” with Australian billionaire James Packer over the range of perks that he bestowed on the heir to the throne, but relations with a Palestinian man with implications for national security.

It’s worthy of a defamation suit, just as calling the New Israel Fund the Israel Destruction Fund is – whenever the New Israel Fund decides to stop making nice and starts biting back. Incidentally, the fund’s members were also compared here to cancer “and their metastases.” 

And of course, there are the stories about the foreign funding sources, coming again from a member of a family that has always lived on foreign funding – for example from cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson, from French swindler Arnaud Mimran, from its champagne and cigar supplier, Arnon Milchen, and of course good old James Packer, who according to Raviv Drucker and Channel 10 News, used to host Netanyahu Jr. in the Australian’s luxury homes in Israel and abroad, flying him in his private jet, sometimes also picking up the tab for Yair Netanyahu’s friends who joined him.

Packer also reportedly allowed him to stay in his home in Aspen, Colorado on a ski vacation in what journalist Ben Caspit reported was one of the most expensive security operations in the history of the Shin Bet(!)

Why am I burdening Haaretz readers with this whole saga? For two main reasons. First, as mentioned, to highlight the ideological environment in which the prime minister works. Some of the motifs in this saga are well-known, for example matters involving funding or the obsession with tarnishing the reputation of Shimon Peres, although of course Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife didn’t shirk from pushing themselves into the limelight at every turn at Peres’ funeral, which became an event on a global scale.
The second reason relates to some extent to the first, involving the current role of Netanyahu Jr. He is in fact a parasite, but it cannot be said that he just sits around. He has a central role in his father’s propaganda machine, so it bears understanding and analyzing his worldview. He has also brought two friends, Topaz Luk and Jonatan Urich, into key positions from the IDF Spokesman’s Office. 

It now appears that with increased pressure in the imperial household, feelings of self-importance are also at new heights. Instead of quickly deleting his embarrassing comment after it was no longer in the limelight, Netanyahu Jr. actually took the trouble to post it as a screenshot on his own Facebook page in a separate post – word-for-word, including the chutzpah in which he gloried in the finger and the pile of poop that had attracted public attention to himself a few days earlier. It turns out that he thought it was funny.

And he also explained himself: “I saw that some filthy [Facebook] page sullied me that is heavily funded by the radical anti-Zionist organization Molad, which is funded [in turn] by the Israel Destruction Fund and the European Union. I couldn’t restrain myself and I responded.” (Followed by a smiley).

It turns out that the European Union has also been added officially to the list of Israel’s enemies. It’s unnecessary to note that a functioning prime minister, not one who has lost control and is the subject of terror even in his own home, would have called his son to order, certainly not employing him in a substantial position and letting him meet with the president of the United States. In the absence of such a prime minister, it appears that in the near term, we will be subject more and more to the real face of Netanyahu Jr., who in his chutzpah compared himself in the past to the “Israeli Harry” as if Israel was officially a monarchy. 

It would have been appropriate then as now to mention several other little differences to between the two, for example, the fact that the Britain’s Prince Harry was drafted as a combat pilot and risked his life in Afghanistan. The Israeli Harry made do with working in the international department of the Israeli army spokesman’s office.  And when he stole away one Shabbat to eat with his mother, the government security guard assigned to him had to run after him. 

By the way, since posting the comment, Netanyahu Jr. managed also to share a Facebook post roundly attacking Jewish billionaire George Soros, detailing the sum of his contributions to peace and human rights organizations. That’s in case you were wondering why Prime Minister Netanyahu recently intervened in the anti-Semitic billboard campaign against Soros run in Hungary by his friends in the right-wing nationalist government there. 

The Israeli prime minister instructed his foreign ministry to withdraw an official protest lodged with the Hungarians on the matter. It’s that same Hungary where,  during his visit to the country, the Israeli prime minister preached to Eastern European leaders about how to deal with the European Union. It’s all in the family.

The Molad Center said in response: “We hope that the Netanyahu family’s lawyers are not too busy at the present time, because if Yair doesn’t publish an apology on his lie-ridden post, they will have to deal with a libel suit.”