A video that has stirred social media in recent days claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have a legal contract between them that gives her full control over their lives, including allowing her to sign appointments to the heads of the intelligence agency. Mossad, Shin Bet home security service and the Israeli military.
In the video, David Arzi, former vice president of commercial and civil aviation for Israel Aerospace Industries, tells how he saw the terms of the contract. Arzi says he was allowed to read the contract in 1999, during Netanyahu’s first stint as prime minister, by Netanyahu’s longtime lawyer and cousin, David Shimron.
Arzi claims that Shimron had recently been fired from a job and was trying to impress him with how connected he was to the Prime Minister.
Get the daily edition of The Times of Israel by email and never miss our top news.
According to Arzi, the contract includes the Prime Minister’s promise that any overnight trip will include his wife, and that she will be able to attend top-secret meetings.
“She can attend all the most secret meetings, even though she has no security clearance. It impressed me, ”said Arzi in the video, part of a Hebrew interview with journalist Dan Raviv. (Below)
“She authorizes the following appointments, the Mossad chief, the Shin Bet chief and the IDF chief of staff. And this is in writing, she has to give written authorization, otherwise, it is a breach of contract, “he said, adding that” the breach would mean that he would lose all his assets to her “.
The alleged contract still makes several stipulations that give Sara greater control over the couple’s finances.
“There was a very detailed section where she would take care of the finances,” said Arzi. “It was written as; that he wouldn’t have credit cards, just her. And if he needed money, she would give it to him. ”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sara Netanyahu at Ben Gurion Airport on August 18, 2019 (Amos Ben Gershom / GPO)
Arzi described the contract as a 15-page document signed by Netanyahu and his wife.
Journalist Ben Caspit, who wrote a biography of Netanyahu, published the results of two polygraph tests done in recent days by Arzi that revealed him to be telling the truth.
Netanyahu’s office vehemently denied the allegations, saying they are “a complete and recycled lie that will be dealt with legally”.
Shimron also called Arzi’s comments “blatant lie”.
David Shimron, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, at a Likud press conference in Tel Aviv, February 1, 2015. (Flash90)
“I never made a deal between Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, I never saw a deal made by anyone else and I certainly never showed that deal to anyone,” he said, threatening to sue Arzi for defamation.
The allegations are not the first time that Sara Netanyahu has been accused of exercising control over her husband, including in state affairs.
In a leaked transcript of the police investigation into the corruption charges against Netanyahu, Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, told interrogators that Sara vetoed Netanyahu by forming a coalition with current Yamina candidates Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, both of whom previously worked as advisers to Netanyahu.
“I was furious after the previous election, when he [Netanyahu] was refusing not to build a coalition with Bennett because she [Sara] hates him, ”said Miriam Adelson, in an apparent reference to the post-2015 electoral coalition negotiations, when the prime minister allegedly considered not including them in his government.
“I mean, the fate of the Jewish people is doomed because you hate Bennett and Shaked, so he doesn’t make a coalition with the right man that fits,” Adelson told investigators.
In other leaked transcripts, Sara Netanyahu told police that the couple had not had credit cards in 15 years because they continued to lose them.
In June 2019, Sara Netanyahu was convicted of misusing public funds as part of a court settlement in a case involving allegations she acquired illegally and then wrongly reported on catering services at the prime minister’s residence.
Sara Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arrives at a hearing at the regional labor court in Jerusalem in the case of Shira Raban, a former official at the Prime Minister’s residence, December 23, 2019. (Yonatan SIndel / FLASH90 )
The deal saw Netanyahu escape conviction for aggravated fraud, but confess a minor charge of taking advantage of a mistake. She was ordered to pay NIS 55,000 ($ 15,210) to the state – NIS 10,000 as a fine and the rest as a refund.
The prime minister is also on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three criminal cases. He denies the charges against him.
