Yair Netanyahu

Yair Netanyahu (born July 26, 1991, Jerusalem) is the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has become known in part for his provocative and sometimes incendiary political messaging on online platforms.

Early life

Yair Netanyahu is one of two sons of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his third wife, Sara Netanyahu. He was raised in Israel with his younger brother, Avner, and a half sister, Noa, from his father’s first marriage. He was four when his father became prime minister for the first time, in June 1996, representing the conservative Likud party in opposition to the Oslo Accords peace process, and they lived in the prime minister’s residence until the end of his term in 1999. He majored in theater in high school.

Right-wing messaging in Israel

From 2009 to 2012 Netanyahu performed his mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a member of the Spokesperson’s Unit. He then attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations in 2016. During that time he, alongside two friends who worked with him in his IDF service, advised his father’s 2015 campaign for reelection. The election took on anti-Arab undertones as an Arab party appeared set to become the third largest in the Knesset, and his father repeatedly made the claim that left-wing parties would form a coalition with the Arab party, which he said would harm national security. Falling behind in the early exit polls, the incumbent prime minister on election day posted a video on Facebook saying that “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls” and calling on voters to go to the polls and “vote Likud to close the gap” with the left-wing Zionist Union party. Later analyses credited the scare tactics with his narrow victory, and he indicated that his son had spearheaded his messaging campaign online. In 2022 Yair Netanyahu earned a master’s degree in political science and government, with a focus on diplomacy and conflict resolution, from Reichman University.

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In time Netanyahu became notorious for his online presence. His posts are often inflammatory: He has wished death upon older protesters, spread conspiracy theories about former U.S. president Barack Obama, cursed French Pres. Emmanuel Macron, and shared a meme that utilized antisemitic tropes to mock his father’s critics. In 2018 he was briefly suspended from Facebook for sharing anti-Muslim content that violated the platform’s policy against hate speech. His social media activity has landed him in court several times for defamation and libel. Internationally, he has cultivated relationships with the far right, in part by calling in 2020 for a “Christian” Europe and appearing in 2026 at a rally with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Move to the United States

In early 2023 Israel witnessed unprecedented unrest when the newly elected far-right government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, attempted to bring the judiciary under legislative oversight, raising concerns over the separation of powers. Yair Netanyahu stoked the already heightened tensions with incendiary social media posts, at one point referring to protesters as “terrorists” and calling for a heavy-handed crackdown. In April he moved from the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem to a luxury high-rise near Miami, Florida, reportedly after a fallout with his parents, who attempted to stop him from posting further on social media. His absence from Israel generated its own controversy after the October 7 attack led the government to call up more than 300,000 army reservists while Netanyahu, who was eligible for reserve duty, remained in Miami. He eventually visited Israel in late November to volunteer at a call center for United Hatzalah, a first-responder organization, but returned to the United States by mid-January when criticism of his father’s handling of the war began to intensify.

In 2025 Likud attempted to appoint Netanyahu to a public relations position on the board of the World Zionist Organization, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to promoting Zionism. Opposition party members described the appointment as “underhanded” on social media and ultimately prevented Netanyahu from receiving the role. In 2026 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that Netanyahu had changed his legal name to Yonatan Hun, his first name following that of his late uncle Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, who was killed during the 1976 Entebbe raid, and his last name coming from the original surname of his mother’s family.