When her husband is in a meeting, she bursts into his office and declares that she urgently needs to talk to him. But her real intention, obvious to all who have seen the performance time and time again, is to eyeball and assess the guest. A few minutes are enough for her to make a judgment.
Meet Sara Netanyahu, the third wife of the controversial, wily, and eloquent politician known by his childhood nickname, “Bibi.” Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving leader, as he has been prime minister for 16 out of the last 28 years.
A strongman in Israel’s feisty democratic politics, Bibi is the bulldozer who for good or bad—mostly for bad—has been shaping his country’s destiny in the 21st century. Sara, at age 65, is the powerful engine behind him.
“The most important value for her is loyalty,” a recent close aide of Bibi told us. Like other advisers to the Netanyahus who were interviewed for AIR MAIL, this person asked not to be named. “That means loyalty to her husband and loyalty to their two sons. All her decisions and worldview are determined through the prism of loyalty. ‘Are you with us or against us?’”
Politically connected Israelis, including many in Bibi’s Likud party, speak of Sara’s deep involvement in choosing senior military and security chiefs and other government officials. She is credited with a strong and accurate assessment of who is likely to be loyal, and many sources say Bibi invariably goes along with her preferences. Yossi Cohen, who in 2021 completed five years as Mossad chief, is one example.
Even when highly classified intelligence is being discussed, Sara wants to be on the scene. Before he died, in 2016, former Mossad director Meir Dagan told us of a meeting with Bibi in 2008 at the prime minister’s official residence, on Balfour Street in Jerusalem.
“All her decisions and worldview are determined through the prism of loyalty. ‘Are you with us or against us?’”
The subject was a super-secret operation against Iran. “Suddenly in the middle of the meeting the door opened, and Sara entered the room. I was surprised and stopped my briefing,” Dagan said. “Bibi looked at me and mumbled that it’s OK. After long seconds, I recovered from my shock and replied, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I am sorry but she doesn’t have the top-secret clearance needed to discuss state secrets.’” She allegedly left the room angrily.
Afterward, Bibi’s own aides are said to have expressed even greater astonishment, but in their case it was because they had not yet witnessed any government official with the nerve to say no to Sara.
Since the start of the Gaza war, in October, she seems to be keeping her advice to the prime minister private. Yet he is undoubtedly getting an earful at home as he juggles life-and-death decisions on military strategy, the choice of whether or not to pursue a deal to free hostages, and how to manage a fractious emergency war Cabinet.
“Bibi lets Sara interfere on almost every issue, and in fact she is an important part of the decision-making process,” said Shaul Kimhi, a psychology professor at Tel-Hai College, who used to write character profiles of Arab leaders for Israeli intelligence. Co-author of a 2017 research paper, “Behavior Analysis of Benjamin Netanyahu,” Kimhi told us: “Bibi is controlled by his wife and cooperates with Sara in a most inexplicable way.”
A few of Bibi’s close aides, including Shlomo Filber and Nir Hefetz, agreed to cooperate when the police started investigating Mr. Netanyahu’s alleged bribe-taking, deals favoring media companies in exchange for favorable coverage, and possible corruption in military procurement. The probe began in 2016, criminal charges were filed in 2019, and an extremely slow-moving trial began in May 2020. It’s on hold now, while the war in Gaza continues. The prime minister, who is 74, could face up to 13 years in prison if convicted. He pleaded not guilty on all counts, and both Bibi and Sara have channeled Donald Trump by claiming that the case is an unfair “witch hunt.”
Filber, under pressure from Netanyahu supporters, recanted, and prosecutors have reclassified him as a hostile witness. Hefetz, according to trial participants, is considered by Bibi and Sara to be a traitor who violated the Netanyahu version of omertà. Both a Netanyahu lawyer and the prime minister’s press office did not respond to requests for comment.
Sara has a long and unforgiving memory, yet in fairness her intuition has been sound in differentiating between friend and foe. “She was the first to warn her husband many years ago that Naftali Bennett, his former aide, is very ambitious and poses a threat,” a well-informed source in Israeli right-wing politics told us. “No one, including Bibi, believed her. But eventually it was Bennett who replaced Bibi as prime minister,” before Netanyahu made a comeback in the election of November 2022.
“Bibi is controlled by his wife and cooperates with Sara in a most inexplicable way.”
Sara is a political animal who is nurturing her sons for leadership positions. She seems highly proud of the elder brother, Yair Netanyahu, who, at 32, lived most of his adult life at his parents’ home, recently relocating to Miami, and for a while had a program on a right-wing radio station. He is unremittingly active on social networks, commenting on nearly every subject whether domestic or international. Young Netanyahu’s posts resemble those of Donald Trump Jr., except the Israeli version is more impudent. Yair claimed that Israeli security agencies had attempted a coup d’état against his father.
A close and longtime observer of the family told us, “Yair defined himself as a genius and an expert in global and security affairs with a better understanding of the United States than his father’s. So he didn’t hesitate to insult his own father on numerous occasions, calling him weak.”
On the weekend of January 19, when relatives of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza protested outside the Netanyahus’ home in the seaside town of Caesarea, Sara allegedly sent her 26-year-old son, Avner, outside to try to charm the crowd. He even invited a hunger striker to come inside for dinner. The man refused. Avner has done reserves duty since the war began, but Yair has not been mobilized.
When the prime minister has met with hostage families, behind closed doors, Sara has been present. According to several of the anguished protesters who spoke to Israeli reporters, they were offended by her repeated advice that they stay quiet, remain calm, and trust that the Netanyahu government and the Israel Defense Forces are doing everything possible to free their loved ones.
The spouses of previous Israeli prime ministers never had this kind of chutzpah: Netanyahu’s wife allegedly insists on being labeled “the First Lady of Israel,” although by protocol that title goes to the wife of Israel’s nonpolitical president, Isaac Herzog.
Sara was born in 1958 as Sara Ben-Artzi in a small town, Kiryat Tiv’on, not far from the port city of Haifa. Her father, Shmuel, was a Polish-born Jewish educator, author, poet, and biblical scholar; he died in 2011 at the age of 96. “She was a devoted daughter and adored him,” said an old friend of Sara’s who asked not to be named, “and it was he who shaped her right-wing worldview.”
Shelly Yachimovich, a former leader of the Israeli Labor Party, recalls one of Sara’s idiosyncrasies. “I remember the strong aroma when I entered their residence to receive a briefing from Bibi as a leader of the opposition,” she told AIR MAIL. “The entire staircase leading to the foyer at the house on Balfour was decorated with scented, colorful, burning candles in memory of her father. To me, it looked like a small Indian temple.”
Sara’s mother, Chava, was a teacher who, with her husband, helped her sons become champions in the national Bible contest. In the past two decades, Sara’s brothers have veered away from Netanyahu’s pragmatic conservatism: one is now on the extreme right, while another is on the left wing that calls for concessions to achieve peace.
Young Netanyahu’s posts resemble those of Donald Trump Jr., except the Israeli version is more impudent.
As a teenager, Sara wrote for a youth magazine, and she has continued to believe in the importance of media coverage. She is a self-schooled expert on image building. “Sara is very sensitive to her appearance and devotes a lot of time to be worked on by her stylist, hairdresser, and makeup artist,” one of her confidants told us.
Throughout her adult life, she has allegedly struggled with her weight. “When she gained a few kilos, she accused me of overfeeding her,” Meni Naftali, who served as the manager of the official residence on Balfour, told us.
Naftali eventually left the job, complaining that he and female housekeepers had been humiliated and mistreated by Sara. He alleged that she yelled at them and made “unreasonable demands,” such as being served a meal in the middle of the night. “I worked there for 20 months, and it was hell for me,” Naftali added. In 2016, a labor court ordered the prime minister’s office to pay him $52,000 for mistreatment by Sara, including slander.
In 2019, she accepted a plea bargain and was fined around $15,000 for misusing government funds on personal expenditures, including lavish weekend meals. She insisted she was innocent and was apparently incensed at now having a criminal record.
When feeling insulted, she has been heard on tape shouting at an aide that she is a qualified psychologist, spelling out the letters “B-A, M-A!” at the top of her lungs. Indeed, her two-year army duty included training as a “psycho-technical evaluator” in Israel’s military-intelligence agency before she earned a B.A. in psychology at Tel Aviv University, in 1984, and then a master’s degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
At age 22, she married her first husband, Doron Neuberger. The couple divorced seven years later, in 1987. It was a bitter breakup, and in 1996 he wrote a tell-all, clearly intended to embarrass Sara. The Netanyahus managed to quash the book through a secret deal, approved and sealed by a family court.
In 2019, she accepted a plea bargain and was fined around $15,000 for misusing government funds on personal expenditures, including lavish weekend meals.
It was while working as an El Al flight attendant that she met Bibi—then deputy foreign minister—and they quickly married, in 1991. She was 32 years old. He was 42, already divorced twice and reputed to be a philanderer.
Two years into their marriage, Bibi heard that his rivals claimed to have a videotape proving he was cheating on Sara. In what some Israeli politicians describe as a typical Netanyahu panic, he rushed to a TV studio and confessed—on live television—that he’d had an extramarital affair with a campaign consultant.
Sara was deeply hurt, but eventually they repaired their marriage. Since that incident, Israeli media have been swamped with rumors that Sara forced Bibi to sign a marriage contract that had been drafted by one of the country’s top lawyers (Yaakov Neeman, who later became minister of justice).
The contract supposedly details every facet of their daily life. It’s noteworthy that she accompanies her husband on every trip abroad, and when they climb the stairs to board his official plane, they hold hands. But another lawyer who worked closely with the couple told us that there is no contract. “They simply learned to appreciate and love each other and to show affection,” he said.
One thing they have in common is stinginess. Thanks to income from Mr. Netanyahu’s books, lecture tours, and consulting work when out of office—plus legitimate investments—the family is wealthy and owns properties worth tens of millions of dollars. Yet, as a former aide to the Netanyahus told us, “they don’t like to put their hands in their pockets, and they barely spend their own money.”
Instead, they preferred to be showered with gifts from wealthy benefactors such as Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and the Australian casino tycoon James Packer, gifts that included expensive cigars. Bibi’s taste for Cubans eventually led to his indictment and the threat of prison time, which he is assiduously striving to sidestep by staying in office. According to trial testimony, Sara nudged two neighbors to give her cases of pink champagne.
Israeli newspapers reported that, on some foreign trips, Sara and Bibi brought along suitcases full of dirty laundry. They would have it all cleaned, at Israeli-taxpayer expense, at whatever posh hotel was housing them, their staff, and security entourage. Naftali, the residence manager who collected damages for Sara’s behavior, told us, “She is obsessed with cleanliness and tidiness.”
“At the heart of it all lies the feeling that they are not ordinary people of flesh and blood but somehow above all others,” explained one of the couple’s most senior ex-advisers, who worked with them for years until he decided that he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I believe their problem comes from their trips to Washington,” Naftali recalled. “Sara and Bibi traveled to the White House and saw the pomp and ceremony, and how they’ve been received there, and then when they returned to little Israel they got confused and made believe like they are royals who deserve the same treatment.”
Yossi Melman, a defense-and-intelligence analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and Dan Raviv, a retired CBS News correspondent, are the authors of Spies Against Armageddon and other books on Israeli intelligence. Melman is based in Tel Aviv; Raviv, in Washington, D.C.
