Sara Netanyahu said to have ordered protest against neighbors whose pilot son died in war
Texts quoted in TV report also show PM’s wife, son ordering late secretary to dig up dirt on premier’s rivals, intimidate key actors in his graft cases, sic police on protesters
Text messages published Thursday purport to show that Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was instrumental in efforts to combat those perceived as enemies of the family, going so far as to instruct her husband’s secretary to send activists of his Likud party to hurl obscenities at their neighbors, the parents of a fallen military pilot, who were active in demonstrations against the premier.
The correspondence of Benjamin Netanyahu’s late aide Hanni Bleiweiss, published by Channel 12 investigative program “Uvda,” indicated that the premier’s wife and son were active in efforts to dig up dirt on his political rivals; intimidate key actors in his corruption trial; and sic law enforcement on protesters against him, while seeking the promotion of police officers who complied with the request.
The Netanyahus were apparently aware of the potential damage of Bleiweiss’s correspondence with the PM’s wife and others were it to fall into the wrong hands: people present at Bleiweiss’s 2023 shiva — the Jewish seven-day mourning period — were cited in the TV report as saying that when Yair Netanyahu, the premier’s son, came to pay his respects, he was especially concerned over the whereabouts of Bleiweiss’s phone. It was unclear if Yair Netanyahu retrieved the phone.
The correspondence appeared to contradict Yair Netanyahu’s denial, in 2020, that the prime minister’s family had anything to do with a controversial demonstration outside the home of their neighbors, Anat and Doron Farkash, whose son, helicopter pilot Cpt. Tom Farkash, was killed in the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
Protesters, spearheaded by Likud activist Orly Lev harangued the bereaved family for hosting anti-government activists at their Caesarea home. Lev denied at the time that she had received instructions from the premier’s office, and told “Uvda” she never knew Bleiweiss — a lie, according to text messages aired by the program.
Lev, according to “Uvda,” shared personal information about the Farkash family with Yair Netanyahu, who reportedly answered that the matter was being “handled.”
Sara Netanyahu, according to the report, wanted to force the neighbors to stop hosting protest meetings and said in a message to Bleiweiss that “[we must] condemn the disgusting Farkashes and respond to the awful things they are doing.”
When Bleiweiss objected that the police and Shin Bet could not order demonstrators out of a private home, Sara Netanyahu was said to respond: “So [have them] curse at them, yell at them.” When Bleiweiss said that, too, was impossible, Netanyahu reportedly told her to bring in “Likudnik people, someone who’s not [a] security guard.”
Sara Netanyahu also reportedly dismissed Bleiweiss’s objections as to the optics of the move. “The Farkashes’ son fell in Lebanon in 2006,” Bleiweiss reportedly pointed out during their exchange.
“I know their pilot son was killed,” the premier’s wife was said to reply. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
Protesters showed up at the Farkash home soon after, “Uvda” said.
רעייתי שרה ואני, יאיר ואבנר, מבכים בצער עמוק על פטירתה של חני בליוויס – חברתי הטובה, מזכירתי ועוזרתי האישית זה כמעט 30 שנה. במשך שנים חני התמודדה בגבורה עם מחלת הסרטן. לצערי, למרות כל המאמצים, חני הלכה לעולמה. הספקתי לבקר אותה לפני ימים אחדים וגם לדבר איתה שלשום, בפעם האחרונה pic.twitter.com/VorNK40hW1
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 16, 2023
According to Thursday’s report, this was not the only time Sara Netanyahu appeared less than charitable to Bleiweiss, who was battling cancer. (Bleiweiss died in March 2023.) During Benjamin Netanyahu’s brief tenure as opposition head, in 2021-2022, his wife was said to have ordered Bleiweiss to chauffeur her from Caesarea to her husband, in Tel Aviv.
Bleiweiss, “Uvda” said, drove the hour-and-a-half from her home in Jaffa to the Netanyahus’ private residence in Caesarea, where she waited another hour for Sara Netanyahu to show up — only to be told that Benjamin Netanyahu would return soon and Bleiweiss’s chauffeur services were unnecessary. Notwithstanding, Sara Netanyahu was said to tell the ailing secretary that she would be needed “tomorrow.”
The rise of Israel’s current top cop
While apparently willing to send agitators to the private home of her bereaved neighbors, Sara Netanyahu was unhappy with the protests outside her own home in Caesarea and the prime minister’s official residence on Jerusalem’s Balfour Street, the TV report said.
In one instance, during a protest outside the Netanyahus’ Caesarea home, Sara Netanyahu was said to order Bleiweiss to bring in Likud activists to stage a counter-protest. Bleiweiss reportedly went the extra mile, saying that she had asked then-interior security minister Amir Ohana to make sure the anti-Netanyahu protesters were handed NIS 1,000 ($275) fines for violating COVID-19 restrictions.
In another message cited by “Uvda,” Bleiweiss bemoaned the fact that then-Tel Aviv police chief Daniel Levy could not be the one handling Balfour protesters in Jerusalem.
“Look at Tel Aviv,” she reportedly wrote, praising how Levy had “picked up the leftists and used violence” in dispersing protests.
At Sara Netanyahu’s request, Bleiweiss reportedly forwarded the praise to Ohana. “This is Tel Aviv police chief Danny Levy, unscrupulously dispersing and arresting protesters with his own hands,” read the message quoted by “Uvda.” “These are the type of people we need. Encourage him.”
Ohana was said to reply: “Done.”
Levy was made police commissioner earlier this year by Ohana’s successor, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Report alleges intimidation in response to political, legal challenges
The “Uvda” report came two weeks into Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his corruption trial, during which he said his wife had become a target of the media’s “character assassination.” Meanwhile, the prime minister’s top aides currently face growing scrutiny over allegations that they tampered with government records and leaked military intelligence to support the premier’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.
The report showed Netanyahu spokesman Jonatan Urich — who has been questioned, but not charged, in the intelligence leak case — urging Bleiweiss in 2017 to launch a smear campaign against Likud power player Israel Katz, after the then-transportation minister (now defense minister) expressed faith in law enforcement amid the allegations that Netanyahu had accepted luxury goods and positive press coverage in return for political favors.
“Katz is trying to stick a knife in Netanyahu’s back. There is no room for subversive elements in the Likud,” was the message Urich reportedly drafted to Bleiweiss.
“Please make it public via a third party. Not from us,” he was said to add.
Sara Netanyahu also reportedly ordered Bleiweiss to help smear the prime minister’s political rivals, asking her to look up “traitor, loser” ex-Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar’s “skeletons of sexual harassment reports in the closet”; publicize the “treasons, the trips to Russia and Belarus” of Moldova-born Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Lieberman; and tell supporters of Aryeh Deri and Yaakov Litzman what “traitors” the ultra-Orthodox leaders are, given their perceived alliance with former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, an arch-nemesis of the premier’s wife.
Still more vitriol was reportedly reserved for leading figures in the corruption cases against Benjamin Netanyahu: prosecutor Liat Ben-Ari, who oversaw the investigations; former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who served the premier’s indictments; and Hadas Klein, former secretary to Netanyahu benefactor Arnon Milchan, and a key witness in the case alleging Netanyahu illicitly received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cigars, champagne and jewelry — much of it allegedly at Sara Netanyahu’s request.
The “scoundrel” Klein, Sara Netanyahu reportedly wrote to Bleiweiss, had “smeared us for years, lied, slandered.” Language similar to Netanyahu’s message featured soon thereafter in social media posts against Klein, “Uvda” said.
“The great dictator Mandelblit,” Sara Netanyahu wrote Bleiweiss, according to Channel 12, was “killing the prime minister” by weighing a demand that the indicted premier resign. Sara urged a “war of tens of thousands” against the then-attorney general, whose home became a favorite target of right-wing protests.
In a message adorned with 47 exclamation points, Sara Netanyahu reportedly said Mandelblit would first oust the premier, “then do a trial with a preconceived sentence and find him guilty.”
Bleiweiss was said to have asked another, unidentified person to spread the word, requesting that he “please write from all kinds of cards” — indicating the prime minister’s aides’ regular use of fake social media accounts, according to “Uvda.”
Meanwhile, the premier’s allies set their sights on Ben-Ari, and discovered that a property that she owned was illegally divided. Likud activists proceeded to loudly demonstrate outside her house on a near-daily basis. Text messages published by Channel 12 showed Sara Netanyahu had asked Bleiweiss to organize those demonstrations.
Bleiweiss reportedly forwarded the request to Lev, the Likud activist made notorious for the protest against the premier’s neighbors.
“Listen,” Bleiweiss was said to write. “[You need to be] near that Ben-Ari’s house day-in day-out, day and night, she’ll get intimidated. You can’t move from Liat Ben-Ari, you have to be there every day.”
“Of course,” Lev was said to respond — belying her denial of any association with Bleiweiss. “I won’t let her go, Hanni, I swear.”
When Ben-Ari’s sister passed away, the protesters took a week off as the prosecutor sat shiva.
Bleiweiss, according to an exchange published by “Uvda,” informed Yair Netanyahu that she had sent Lev to protest elsewhere “until the whore Ben-Ari finishes the shiva,” after which the protesters would return to the prosecutor.
The premier’s son was said to answer: “Good.”
Channel 12 reported that neither the Prime Minister’s Office nor the Netanyahu family had provided a direct response to the program’s revelations and allegations. It quoted Netanyahu’s Likud party stating, “‘Uvda’ is not a journalistic program but a rather a tool to destroy the rule of the right by using lies, recycled material and anonymous testimony.”
