FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM «He declares that he still lives with his parents, he does not have a job». Yair Netanyahu is heard as a witness by the police who are investigating his father Benjamin, now on trial for corruption.
The eldest son of the longest-serving head of government in the history of Israel – almost sixteen years in total – actually has an occupation: 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 turns in the electoral campaigns and has not stopped even in these days of military campaign.
Yair has no longer lived with his parents in their residence in Jerusalem since before the summer. In August he was a guest in Puerto Rico of a cryptocurrency billionaire, but he is spending these 37 days of conflict against Hamas in Miami, even though at 32 he would be old enough to join the reservists, he performed his mandatory service in the military office military spokesmen.
Even from a distance he lends his voice to his father’s political survival: the Jerusalem Post newspaper has relaunched the data collected by a media analysis site. Yair does not express himself in the most visible places (X, Instagram) but uses his Telegram profile to distance his father from any responsibility linked to the October 7 disaster and to try to place it on the military or intelligence leaders.
Local newspapers revealed in the spring that his parent had suggested he take a long holiday abroad and also grant it to the Israelis inundated with thousands of his messages on various platforms, electronic press blackout after a tirade against the State Department accused by best known of the brothers – the younger Avner has withdrawn – of manipulating the demonstrations against the anti-democratic justice plan carried out by the far-right coalition. Some of his interventions have already been condemned for defamation: when Benny Gantz was in the opposition and was not yet sitting in the restricted war council with dad, Yair spread the name of the woman who was supposed to be the lover of the former chief of staff and lost in court.
Now the man who was considered the possible heir to the leadership of the Israeli far right says he has requested a work visa in the United States but fears it will be refused due to his previous attacks on the American administration.