Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 26-year-old son has been caught on tape outside a Tel Aviv strip club drunkenly boasting about his powerful father and making derogatory comments about women, according to reports.
The 2015 recording captured Yair Netanyahu gabbing with Nir Maimon, the son of gas tycoon Kobi Maimon, and Yair’s pal Roman Abramov, according to the Times of Israel.
“My dad set up 20 billion dollars for your dad, and you’re fighting with me about 400 shekels [about $115]?” Yair tells Nir upon leaving the jiggle joint, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported.
Netanyahu later said the 400 shekels was for a prostitute.
According to the report on Israel’s Channel 2 television, Yair and Nir ended up at the apartment of Australian billionaire James Packer, whose Israeli liaison is Abramov, Haaretz reported.
A state-funded security guard and driver accompanied the younger Netanyahu and his pals from one strip club to another, according to the news outlet.
In the audio recording, Yair also discusses a woman with whom the station reported he had been in a relationship.
“If you want, I can set you up with some …,” he says of her, in comments the channel said it censored because of their offensive nature. He adds that he is broke and could charge money for pimping her out.
Yair also tells Nir that the prime minister advanced a controversial gas deal in parliament that benefited his father.
Model Lee Levi, the woman whom Yair was apparently referring to, said Tuesday she was ashamed to have been involved with someone who could hold such “offensive” views about women, the Times of Israel reported.
“The fact that maybe the speakers were at the end of a night of entertainment and alcohol does not detract from the gravity of the comments, the horror and disgust that gripped me when I heard and understood the content of the conversation,” Levi, who lives and works in Los Angeles, wrote on Facebook. “It is important for me to stress that the feeling of disgust didn’t come from the fact that perhaps some of the things were directed at me, but rather from the simple fact that even in today’s world there are those who think and talk in such an offensive and contemptuous way about us, the women.”
The recording also led to further criticism of Yair’s father’s handling of Israel’s natural gas industry at a time when he already faces two unrelated graft probes, Agence France-Presse reported.
Kobi Maimon is a stakeholder in a company that owns a share in Israel’s offshore Tamar gas field.
Yair apologized for the episode and said he was only joking about a natural gas deal while “under the influence of alcohol.”
“These statements do not represent who I am nor the values on which I was raised,” he said in a statement. “Regarding what I said about the gas deal, it was a joke. Anyone with a bit of common sense understands that right way.”
The prime minister defended his son Tuesday during a meeting with NATO ambassadors in Jerusalem.
“My son was correct in saying yesterday that he had spoken foolish words,” Netyanyahu said, according to the Times of Israel. “He said, ‘It’s not me, Yair.’ He said that these are not the values that characterize him. And he’s right.”
Netanyahu added that he had raised his two sons to “respect everyone, and to respect every woman. This is also why I vehemently oppose the exclusion of women [from public affairs]. Women should play central roles in academia, science, and the air force. These are the values we believe in.”