Yair Netanyahu: "Until my father arrived, we only exported oranges or something like that...""

November 7, 2019   

Yair Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, participated in a conference in New York last night (Thursday) and during which he gave an interview to Rabbi Shmuli Botach. Channel 7 aired parts of the interview. The attacks in the media on his father: "The problem is not the political criticism (against Netanyahu), that is welcome, but the vicious personal attacks, the distortion, the lies, the slander that we see, not one day, not two days, not a week or a month, but every year and year for thirty years. The truth is, it is really exhausting, it never ends. And it does not come from the Israeli left but from a small, very small group of extremists from the margins of Israeli society, but they have taken over Israel's mainstream media. The media in Israel does not represent the people of Israel or even the Israeli left, it represents an insignificant part of Israeli society, but they have all the power." Why is he on social media: "Since social media has entered our lives in such a significant way, for the first time the average Israeli has a voice. It's very encouraging that the silenced majority in Israel finally has the opportunity to express themselves. That's why I've been there (on social media), my whole life, since I was a child, I've been watching TV and getting angry about injustice, and when I suddenly got on social media, there's the ability to respond to things. You see this especially on Twitter, when a journalist publishes something, I respond to him and explain that it's a lie and show the facts.... In most cases, they don't have an answer and they don't respond. That's why I got on social media - I can't stand injustice." The success of his father, the Prime Minister: "He works 24 hours a day, it's not a job but his life's mission. The mission is to save the Jewish people from annihilation, but not just to survive but to thrive. One of the things my father did and I'm so proud of him is that he took a country in the 1990s that, alongside the existential threat, had a primitive socialist Soviet-style economy. There was no export except oranges or something like that. Israel was isolated in the world, the reason it was isolated was weakness, no one wants to be a friend of the weak, but they want to be friends with the strong." Does his father give him the freedom to express himself however he wants? "I'm 28 years old... Sometimes he's not really happy with things... But what can you do? If I were 16, you could have grounded me, but we've reached the point where I'm a man on my own. So what can you do..." During the interview, protesters broke into the hall, interrupting Yair Netanyahu during his speech. The protesters were removed by security guards and the rabbi is confident.