Who is Benjamin Netanyahu's wife Sara? Israeli PM's partner can allegedly take part in 'most secret meetings'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in the news worldwide in the past couple of weeks. On Sunday, May 16, Netanyahu said there was no clear end in sight to the violence between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. “We’ll do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet,” he said. “It will take some time.”
Israel has faced wide condemnation from international press organizations for blowing up a building on Saturday, May 15, that housed the offices of international media organizations including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera. Israeli officials claimed that the building harbored military assets for Hamas. Netanyahu, speaking about it, said, “It’s a perfectly legitimate target,” adding that Israeli forces “unlike Hamas, take special precautions to tell people ‘leave the building, leave the premises.’”
READ MORE
Israel-Palestine conflict: Joe Biden is yet to reverse Donald Trump's pro-Israel policies
On the killings of Palestinian children, Netanyahu blamed Hamas, saying the organization uses civilians as human shields. “We are targeting a terrorist organization that is targeting our civilians and hiding behind their civilians, using them as human shields,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to hit the terrorists themselves, their rockets, their rocket caches, and their arms, but we’re not just going to let them get away with it.”
Who is Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sara Netanyahu?
Netanyahu has been married three times. His first marriage was to Miriam Weizmann. In 1978, when Miriam was pregnant, Benjamin reportedly met a non-Jewish woman from Britain called Fleur Cates. When their affair came to light, Netanyahu married Fleur. It reportedly didn’t last long. They divorced in 1984.
Sara Netanyahu and Benjamin got married in 1991. It was while working as a flight attendant when she met Netanyahu who was then a prominent figure in the right-wing Likud party. Sara too was married before. As per reports, she got married to Doron Neuberger in 1980, however, the couple divorced in 1987.
Born on November 5, 1958, in the northern Israeli town of Tivon, near Haifa, her father Shmuel Ben-Artzi was a Polish-born academic while her mother Chava was from Jerusalem.
Sara completed a degree in psychology in 1984 and served in the Israeli Defence Force, as part of her mandatory military service, working as a psycho-technical evaluator. Sara completed a masters degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996.
The couple has two sons. Yair served in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit and then went on to get his BA in international relations, history and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Avner is reportedly a soldier in an IDF combat unit.
As per Israeli government records, during her husband's first tenure as prime minister, Sara volunteered to serve as chairperson of the Hand in Hand organization for children in distress and the Step Forward organization for children with cerebral palsy.
Earlier this year in March, the Times of Israel reported that the Netanyahus have a legal contract between them that gives Sara sweeping control over core aspects of Israel’s national affairs. This includes provisions for her to sit in at top-secret meetings and to sign off on appointments of the heads of the Mossad intelligence agency, Shin Bet domestic security service, and the Israeli military.
David Arzi, former vice president of commercial and civil aviation at Israel Aerospace Industries, claimed: “She can take part in all the most secret meetings, even though she does not have security clearance. That jumped out at me… She authorizes the following appointments, the head of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet and the IDF chief of staff. And that is in writing, she has to give the authorization in writing, if not, it is a violation of the contract.”
Netanyahu’s office has strongly denied the claims, saying they are “a complete and recycled lie that will be handled legally.”