How Benjamin Netanyahu Pushed Israel Into Chaos

He met Sara Ben-Artzi in 1988 on a layover at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. She was 30 and a flight attendant; he was 39 and Israel’s deputy overseas minister. They went out on a number of dates, however in response to Ben Caspit’s “The Netanyahu Years,” there was no nice chemistry. Quickly after that, he informed pals that they broke up. By 1991, they’d reunited. They married in March of that 12 months at his dad and mom’ home in Jerusalem; Sara was visibly pregnant.

Two years later, Netanyahu shocked the nation when he went on the air and confessed to having cheated on his new spouse. Within the aftermath of the affair, there have been experiences within the Israeli press about rumors that Sara had agreed to take him again solely after making him signal some type of secret settlement stipulating that he couldn’t have contact with different ladies with out her data and will go hardly wherever with out her. She additionally intervened at work. “Sara was shot into the Prime Minister’s Workplace as from a cannon,” Caspit writes in his ebook. The previous senior aide to Netanyahu informed me, “Our entire purpose was to construct a layer of protection round Bibi to guard him from Sara’s insanity and permit him to do his work.” The portrait that emerges from such tales is of a scorned, grifting, raging girl. In varied profitable lawsuits and investigative experiences over time, this portrait seems to bear out.

Since his indictment in 2019, Netanyahu’s bond with Sara appears to have hardened. Of their view, they’re victims of a state plot to unseat them. The state prosecution claims that from 2011 to 2016, Netanyahu accepted a gradual provide of cigars, instances of Champagne and jewellery from Arnon Milchan, an Israeli movie producer in Hollywood, and James Packer, an Australian billionaire. In trade for these presents, estimated to have been value lots of of hundreds of {dollars}, the prosecution says that Netanyahu lobbied U.S. officers to assist Milchan renew his U.S. visa and tried to lighten his tax burden in Israel. (Milchan and Packer usually are not on trial, and Packer has not been accused of a quid professional quo.) A former Netanyahu spokesman who turned state witness in 2018 informed prosecutors that he had discovered of “a technique, let’s say, by which, on each go to overseas, the Netanyahu household was connected to a strolling bank card on two legs” — that means to native benefactors.

In 2021, an uncommon video went viral in Israel. Set towards a black background, it featured the account of a person named David Artzi. Artzi, the previous deputy head of Israel Aerospace Industries, met with David Shimron, Netanyahu’s cousin who was then his non-public lawyer in 1999. Shimron, Artzi claimed, had lately been fired by one other shopper, and in attempting as an instance to Artzi that he was nonetheless in demand, he introduced up his work with Netanyahu. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a contract that he had drawn up between Sara and Bibi. “So I learn it over rigorously, slowly, slowly, and I virtually faint,” Artzi recalled. It was 15 pages lengthy and, in response to Artzi, said that “he would haven’t any bank cards, solely she would, and that if he wanted cash she would give it to him in money.” It additionally outlined Sara’s veto energy over appointments together with the navy’s chief of workers, the top of Shin Wager and the top of the Mossad, Artzi mentioned. Shimron denies Artzi’s account and has since sued him for libel. In testimony early this 12 months, Sara Netanyahu mentioned that “this settlement didn’t exist,” and Netanyahu known as Artzi’s account a “gross lie.”

However the former senior protection official mentioned he was satisfied of Sara’s energy. He informed me that he had spoken to somebody who had witnessed Netanyahu grilling a candidate for a delicate function about private “loyalty.” The previous Netanyahu spokesman informed the investigative program “Hamakor,” “There’s an settlement that the innermost appointments within the bureau don’t move with out a inexperienced mild from Sara Netanyahu.”