A 2015 recording from a night spent strip club-hopping that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, likely never thought would see the light of day has surfaced across Israeli media this week. And it ain’t pretty.
“My dad got a great deal for your dad,” Yair Netanyahu told Ori Maimon, whose father is Israeli tycoon Kobi Maimon, in the conversation captured outside a strip club. “Bro, you have to be nice to me. Bro, my dad got your dad a sweet deal, he fought for it at the Knesset, bro.”
The reference was to a proposed natural gas deal that would have split profit between state and private entities, benefiting Maimon, who owns a gas field off the coast of Israel.
The young men are also heard bickering over how much money they spent that evening on prostitutes, two of whom Netanyahu refers to as “the best.”
“If we’re already talking hookers, what’s open at this hour?” Netanyahu asked. “Do you think the waitress will play along?”
Netanyahu told Maimon’s son to stop whining over money he sought to borrow in a club. “My father arranged 20 billion dollars for your father, and you’re crying over 400 shekels [about $100] for me, you son of a bitch.”
Netanyahu even threatens to kill a bodyguard and driver accompanying them, concerned that the conversation could be leaked.
“In a night-time conversation, under the influence of alcohol, I said nasty things about women and other things that should not have been said,” the younger Netanyahu said in a statement. “These things don’t represent the person I am, the values I was educated on and what I believe.”
His family, in its own statement, denounced the release of the recording, which it claimed is fake.
“Every parent that watched the report should think how they would react if every false expression of their kids was turned into a headline on Channel 2, and every time they left the house, it was turned into an investigation and every conversation was turned into a hidden recording,” the family said.
The prime minister is already knee-deep in corruption scandals that he’s managed to keep at bay for years. He’s currently a suspect in a series of bribery, breach-of-trust, and fraud cases. He and his wife also reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts, in the form of cigars and champagne, from Australian billionaire James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan.
The younger Netanyahu, meanwhile, was under fire last year for posting a seemingly anti-Semitic image on Facebook showing the billionaire George Soros dangling a globe alongside some kind of reptile. It was retweeted by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.