Yair Netanyahu Accuses State Department, CIA of Financing Overthrow of Israeli Government After being exiled from Israel, Netanyahu is spotted at luxurious Miami apartment owned by billionaire pro-Israel owner

NOTE: I’ve just published two new pieces: Israel Is Bullying Progressives on Borrowed Time in Jacobin reports on Pramila Jayapal’s “Israel is a racist country,” and the backlash it stirred from the Israel Lobby and pro-Israel Congress members.  Middle East Eye published Israel judicial crisis: An existential battle for the nation’s future. Please read and post to your social media platforms.

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Yair Netanyahu, a troubled, angry, sociopathic son of Bibi Netanyahu was, according to accounts posted to social media, “exiled” to the US after an incident over which the attorney general threatened to prosecute him.  She negotiated a deal, again according to these accounts, under which Netanyahu Jr. would leave the country for an unspecified amount of time.

There are two main accounts circulating online.  I’ve translated both here:

“What I’ve heard up to now: if he returns [to Israel] he will be arrested immediately. The reason is that sometime after the elections, the heads of the security agencies met with his father for a security briefing.  They requested that he leave. He wasn’t happy about this. This led to his slapping his father, after which he was immediately removed by the Shin Bet security agents, and detained in one of the rooms [of the house]. They didn’t take away his cell phone and he tweets with someone “the Shabak is conducting a coup.”  The Shabak removed the tweet immediately.

An attack on the prime minister. By his son. This is a crime which includes attacking a “symbol of state” and all that bullshit. This is a serious matter in the eyes of the security apparatus. The Shin Bet chief wanted to charge him with a crime.  Bibi was presured and turned to the attorney general, Meira, to help broker a compromise between the two sides.  This was the agreement: Yair would be exiled from the country and forbidden to use social media. That’s why he’s in Miami now Unable to return.

In the meantime, he’s beginning to undermine the agreement by posting to social media–which worsens the situation. If he returns, he will be arrested immediately.

Another important point, Bibi has been forced not to agitate himself [due to implanting a pacemaker] or else to fire he attorney general.

This what I know thus far. From good, reliable sources.”

This account from on Facebook by Avshalom Elitzur is slightly more vague, but also connects with what follows below:

“No, no, NOT because [Yair] struck his father while under the influence of drugs and was banned from Israel. That is, *maybe* he struck his father under the influence of drugs–I do not know–but that’s not the reason he was banned.

For the first time in his life he’s found himself, a 30 year-old sociopath, out of his parent’s home without access to social media, which up till now he never lived without.

What caused this is even more frightening and disturbing. One day when it’s revealed it will shake the country. There are conversations daily between Miami [Yair’s current residence] and the villa on Gaza Street and the prime minister’s office, encrypted and secured with the level of nuclear secrets. That’s one of the reasons Bibi’s health has deteriorated.

Know that in the eyes of the CIA, Mr Netanyahu Jr is a target no less important than the [Israel] embassy in Washington. They already know. What they know overshadowed the rebuke Biden offered Netanyahu day before yesterday. This too is a comfort.”

Israeli Channel 12 aired a segment noting that Baby Bibi spread disinformation first promoted by far-right radio personality, Mark Levin, who Netanyahu falsely describes as a retired assistant US attorney.  In reality, while he did once practice law, Levin served as chief of staff to Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese over 40 years ago.

Netanyahu promotes a March 24th post by an Israel right-winger which describes Levin’s charges:

The State Department is funding the protests in Israel in an attempt to overthrow the Netanyahu government in order to reach an agreement with the rulers in Iran. Leave aside what this says about the useful idiots protesting in the streets. More important is what this says about Netanyahu’s political alternatives.

At other times, Netanyahu the Younger has claimed that the CIA too was conspiring to overthrow his father.  A State Department spokesperson categorically rejected the rumor. Normally, he wouldn’t have even bothered given the source.  But given Yair’s intrusion into the matter, and the sensitivity of his status as key advisor to his father (Israeli journalists semi-jokingly refer to him as ‘acting prime minister’), he was forced to do so.

The earliest version of the fake coup plot claim appeared last February in a far-right pro-Israel site,  JNS News.  Its version is only slightly less sinister than Yair’s.  But disturbing and mendacious nonetheless.  The site claims that the US is funding a nefarious Freemason cabal (not really) that is the brains behind the pro-democracy protests.  The villain is none other than the Movement for Quality of Government in Israel.  It’s the equivalent of the League of Women Voters.  It advocates for democracy and good government, not to overthrow the government.

This breathless commentary from last February has to be read to be believed:

…The first major rally against democratic [sic] judicial reform…was organized by a group known as the Movement for Quality Government. MQG receives annual funding from the State Department to purportedly conduct “classes” on democracy in Israeli schools. The State Department is well aware that MQG has a long history of waging “lawfare” against the Israeli government, because its work has been cited in its “human rights” reports. While State Department funding was not programmed for protests, money is fungible, and the Biden administration knows it’s funding an anti-Netanyahu group.

You can see the subtle transformation of the story by Netanyahu: instead of a US-funded Israeli NGO organizing the protest movement, the State Department, on behalf of the US government was funding the protests in an attempt to overthrow Netanyahu.  It only took one month for this transformation to happen.

The author of the JNS story offers no proof of State Department funding nor of the purported “lawfare” campaign against the government.  I dare say because there is none.  But suffice it to say that he hasn’t offered any.

Yair worsens US-Israel rift

Returning to Netanyahu, his conspiracy-mongering worsened already strained relations between Netanyahu and Biden. It only added fuel to the fire, and further distanced a coveted invitation for the Israeli premier to visit the White House. Yair was, reportedly, one of the subjects the US president brought up in a phone conversation recently.  During that call, he also urged Netanyahu to stop the judicial coup. Apparently, to no avail.

It’s possible that Yair was banished and prohibited from using social media because his social media posts were so incendiary, they threatened US-Israel relations.  Though in that case, it would seem bizarre to exile him to Miami.

Levin’s bizarro coup plot conspiracy theory was dredged up from none other than, The Stormer, the neo-Nazi site named after Goebbels’ Der Shturmer.  From there, it spread like a cancer throughout the right-wing disinformation channels.  Eventually making its way to Levin.

Clearly, anyone such as Levin who would knowingly spread the garbage spewed by The Stormer is the dregs of the dregs.  He is a conspiracy-monger who never met a lie he didn’t like…as long as it smeared Democrats, African-Americans, immigrants, etc.  He and Netanyahu are birds of a feather: delusional purveyors of disinformation.  It’s red meat for their base, which hungers for conspiracy theories.

Yair is incredibly litigious and threatens libel suits right and left. Meanwhile, he is the subject of such suits and has been forced to pay $80,000 in damages in one case and $100,000 in another.  In the latter matter, he demanded that the State pay the judgment levied him.

Bibi Jr.’s attorney sent a warning letter this week to Elitzur and Israeli lawyer, Gonen Ben Itzhak, who published separate Facebook posts, which I translated above.  He makes wild claims about causing Yair immense suffering and knowingly publishing lies about him.  He warns that he will claim damages of $250,000, which overvalues his client’s human worth by several hundred thousand times.  I don’t know how Elitzur and Ben Itzhak will respond to this threat.  But regardless of what they do, I wanted to have their posts published here so that they cannot be suppressed by Yair’s bullying.

Haaretz journalist Uri Misgav posted last Tuesday that there are reports that Yair returned to Israel on Sunday, because his US tourist visa expired.  He wonders whether US officials will be willing to renew it given his feeble attempts to blame the CIA and State Department for conspiring to overthrow the government.

Nor is this the only time the Netanyahu family has concocted such wild conspiracies.  Several years ago, in the run-up to the election, Bibi Netanyahu aired wild claims that the Obama administration was paying for buses to carry “Arabs” to the polls. He added that the only way to stop the US from stealing the election was for his supporters to get to the polls.  Needless to say, there was no conspiracy, there were no buses.

After her husband lost a Likud leadership race to Ariel Sharon, Sara Netanyahu infamously said: “We’ll move abroad. Let this country burn.”

Bibi Netanyahu is now setting the country on fire solely to keep himself out of prison and retain his political power. Netanyahu pere, mere et fils are narcissistic sociopaths. Pure self-interest has replaced any sense of right and wrong.  Think of Louis XIV’s “l’etat c’est moi;” or Nero fiddling while Rome burned.  Bibi is right up there with the most disastrous megalomaniacs in history.