Netanyahu’s Son Pressured Him To Tweet Support For Trump’s Mexico Wall

Like father, like son?: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his son Yair. Image by Getty Images

By JTA June 18, 2018

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair, pressured his father to post a tweet in support of President Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

The tweet, made in January 2017, led the Mexican government to summon the Israeli ambassador to Mexico for a reprimand. The Mexican government also demanded an apology from Israel.

The tweet said: “President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”

Trump retweeted it less than a day later.

The Israeli daily Yediot Acharonot on Sunday published a report which notes that the prime minister posted the tweet at his son’s urging, despite the opposition of several of the prime minister’s top advisors.

“This was an unnecessary tweet, published against the recommendations of all professional advisers,” an inside source told Yediot. “Although it is not criminal, it adds up to yet another questionable decision by Netanyahu, some of which have been security related.”

The information has come to light in witness reports describing Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision-making process during an investigation of the prime minister’s affairs, according to Yediot. Some decisions were made under pressure from family members, including Yair, according to the report.

Nir Hefetz, a former Netanyahu communications director who turned state’s witness in one of the investigations against the prime minister, told police how Yair Netanyahu pressured his father to install metal detectors on the Temple Mount in the wake of the killing in July 2017 of two Israeli police officers at the site, which led to wide-spread protests.

The metal detectors were removed less than a month later.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO