Yair Netanyahu, the elder son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, issued an apology Monday for remarks he made while drunk, which were recorded without his knowledge and published on the Hadashot evening news.
But he still condemned the report itself.
The conversation was recorded in 2015, allegedly by the driver from the Prime Minister's Office who was chauffeuring them, when Yair Netanyahu was making the rounds of Tel Aviv's strip clubs with his friends Nir Maimon, son of billionaire Kobi Maimon, and Roman Abramov, the Israeli representative of Australian billionaire James Packer.
At one point, Abramov is heard saying, "You're [both] stupid. If they [the media] take your picture outside a strip club, how do you think it would look?"
Maimon responds: "Do you know how much I spent today? I lent him [Yair Netanyahu] 400 shekels – 2,400 shekels in a strip club."
Yair Netanyahu then replies: "I'm overdrawn, bro."
Maimon: "I wasted 3,000 shekels today … because I dropped [it] on you, on him [Netanyahu]. Every second I'm, 'Give him a lap dance,' give me one, bro, I paid for the dance."
In the middle of the recording, Yair's mother, Sara Netanyahu, calls her son.
"My mom's calling. Whoa, it's my mom," Yair tells his friends.
Later on, the three golden boys discuss the framework deal for Israel's massive offshore natural gas reserves.
Abramov: "Now, bro … he's opening up the Leviathan [natural gas field] … we're living on it, bro – for two years. What do you have to say about Leviathan?"
Netanyahu: "My dad gave your dad an awesome deal. Bro, you should be praising me. He [my father] fought for it in the Knesset. My dad fixed you up a $20 billion dollar show, and you can't spot me 400 shekels."
Abramov: "This conversation can't get out. God forbid. If it gets out, my God, it'll be hell."
In other parts of the recorded conversation, the young men discuss hiring prostitutes.
Netanyahu is also heard saying about his ex-girlfriend, "We should fix her up with all the guys – I'm paying my debts."
The three are also heard joking with their bodyguard about the possibility of the conversation being leaked, and one says, "If he [the guard] resigns, we need to murder him."
Yair Netanyahu, now 26, called the news report that exposed the conversation "yellow and embarrassing."
The report "presented a secret, illegal recording of a conversation that took place two and a half years ago. Under the influence of alcohol, while out at night, I made nonsense remarks about women and other things that never should have been said. These remarks don't reflect who I am, the values I was raised on, or what I really believe," he said in a statement.
"I regret them and apologize if anyone was offended by them," he added.
Netanyahu said his remarks to Maimon about the natural gas deal "were a bad joke, [me] making fun of him, and anyone with a brain can understand that. I never took any interest in the gas deal and I never knew any details about it."
The Netanyahu family issued a separate, furious response to the news report.
"Every parent who sees the report should think about how they would respond if every bit of nonsense their children said became a lead story … if every outing turned into the subject of an investigation, and every conversation was a target for a secret recording," the family statement read.
"Persecution, bloodshed, and shaming – in your [the media's] view, all means of hurting the Likud government under [Prime Minister] Netanyahu are 'kosher,' even at the price of an uninhibited attack on his family members.
"You don't even quail at using secret recordings that were consistently made and used illegally and shamefully by the driver for the Prime Minister's Office.
"You haven't covered any relative of any other prime minister with such mean-spirited invasiveness, including the relatives who demonstrated against IDF soldiers during a military operation, who received almost no coverage. Your witch hunt has reached a new low by the publication of a secret recording of remarks made in jest two and a half years ago between young men out for an evening, who were drinking. These remarks are not worth being broadcast on a cheap gossip program, much less on the evening news," the statement continued.
"Security officials are the ones who make decisions about security and drivers for the prime minister's sons. When an Iranian website publishes pictures of Yair and Avner [Netanyahu] and calls for them to be killed, security officials apparently have good reasons [for their decisions].
"The prime minister has no contact with Kobi Maimon, whom he met once, about 10 years ago. Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed through the natural gas agreement because he wanted to set up competition for the Tamar natural gas field, which Maimon owns. The prime minister knew nothing about the contact between his son Yair and Kobi Maimon's son. Yair is not involved in the gas agreement at all, and if he talked about it, he was obviously joking.
"We do not intend to respond to the rest of the cheap, mean-spirited gossip about remarks that were made as a joke after a night of drinking, which don't reflect Yair's positions at all, and were taken out of context on the cooked-up illegal secret recording," the statement said.
