Strip Club Worker Says Netanyahu's Son Was a Customer for Several Years

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son Yair Netanyahu at an event in 2015. Emile Salman

In fallout from the release of a vulgar voice recording of Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister's son, an employee of a Tel Aviv strip club he allegedly visited said Monday that Yair had frequented strip clubs for several years. His ex-girlfriend also expressed revulsion at the young Netanyahu's language and personal regret for having dated him. 

In the recording of the young Netanyahu, during which he is leaving a strip club in August 2015, Yair told son of Israeli gas tycoon Kobi Maimon, “My dad set up $20 billion for your dad, and you’re fighting with me about 400 shekels [about $115]?” Netanyahu later said the 400 shekels was for a prostitute. “But if you want, I’ll fix you up with [my girlfriend],” Netanyahu said. Maimon asked how could he do that, and Netanyahu replied: “I have to fix her up with everyone, I’m paying off my debts.”

According to the original report by the Israel Television News Company, a state-funded security guard and driver accompanied Netanyahu and his friends from one strip club to another. 

Sex, gas and state-funded security: Yair Netanyahu's wild night out Credit Haaretz

Frequent visitor

One woman who works at a strip club in Tel Aviv told Israel's Channel 13, “One evening I realized that outside the door of a room where men go with women, there were two bodyguards who weren’t associated with the club. They were wearing suits. I asked my boss what that was about and he said that Netanyahu’s son was in one of the rooms with one of the girls. After 20 or 30 minutes he came out and I was in shock.” 

This happened a few more times with his bodygaurds present. "He's been going to strip clubs for several years," she said. Asked if she saw him while working, she said "Sure, of course. I saw him emerge from one of the rooms with with a girl who didn't speak Hebrew. She was from the former Soviet Union. I asked her if she knew who that was in the room with her. "That's the Prime Minister's son?" she responded.

The woman said that it seemed to her "insane that Shin Bet bodyguards accompany him to such places and it's only now coming out," adding that it "seems the young Netanyahu didn't really care."

'Embarassed to have been his girlfriend'

Lee Levy, model ex-girlfriend of Yair Netanyahu.Ronen Fadida

Lee Levi, Yair's ex-girlfriend and a model, who appears to be the woman mentioned in the recording, told the news site Walla on Tuesday, “It is important for me to clarify and voice my opinion about the recorded conversation, and the fact that the things [said] may have been after an evening of entertainment filled with alcohol in no way diminishes the seriousness of the matter, the disgust and revulsion that took hold of me when I heard and realized [what they said].”  She also uploaded a post to that effect to Facebook. 

Levi had been involved with the younger Netanyahu earlier in 2015, though she says the two were no longer a couple when the recording was made. “If there is something I regret and even feel great embarrassment about, it is the fact that I was the girlfriend, even if just for a short time, of a of a person who holds dark opinions about women,” added Levi.

State-funded chaperones 

The person who made the explicit recording is suspected to be Netanyahu's driver. The driver's lawyer, Boaz Koenig, said his client realized the gravity of what he possessed. Koenig told the Israeli public broadcasting corporation Kan that he received a message from his client a few months ago asking for legal advice on the matter, and the two met. “I of course heard about the recording but did not go into matters of how it was done,” said Koenig.

“My client is the salt of the earth," Koenig also said. "He guarded and did everything required of him as part of his job. They have no choice. They are committed to do 24/7 what the subject decides for them,” added Koenig. “Wherever he goes, they have to go with him. This is an unpleasant and possibly ridiculous situation.” 

Oded Raz, the former deputy head of the Shin Bet security service’s division responsible for protecting VIPs, told Kan that he does not remember a single incident in which a Shin Bet security guard recorded a person he was protecting. 

As for protecting the prime minister’s children, Raz said that the case of Netanyahu's family is “very problematic and obsessive, and has no relation to security. As evidence of this, no child of any other prime minister was guarded, even though there those under greater threat and those who hold no less secrets than [Yair] Netanyahu.”