Among the many controversies associated with the extravagance and corruption of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara is Wing of Zion, a 26-year-old Boeing 767 that was purchased in 2016, after the prime minister insisted for years that a dedicated official plane was necessary for security and cost reasons. Previous prime ministers customarily chartered flights with El Al, the national airline, when they flew abroad on official business.
An independent committee headed by Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Goldberg agreed that Netanyahu could have his plane, provided the necessary refurbishment were completed within one year for a cost that did not exceed 150 million shekels (about $52 million at today’s exchange rate). In fact, the refurbishment took 8 years and cost, according to the state comptroller’s report, nearly 1 billion shekels (about $345 million).
When it finally took off for its maiden flight in 2024, an official visit to Washington, D.C., Uri Misgav, a veteran journalist who is a prominent critic of the prime minister, described the plane as “a dismal monument to everything Benjamin Netanyahu has wrought upon the state,” meaning “the corruption, enfeeblement, loss of capabilities, erosion of checks and balances, emasculation of the country’s watchdogs and subjugation of the defense establishment to the whims and caprices of one family.”
Last week, Edna Halbani, a former senior aide to the Netanyahus, told the host of the Haaretz weekly podcast that she had seen the plane, and that it had been customized “entirely to accommodate the whims of one person,” to which the host of the program responded: “You mean Sara Netanyahu.”
Details of Sara Netanyahu’s corruption have for many years been a favorite topic with the media, which alternates between mocking and condemning her shameless grifting and exploitation. The details revealed recently about her involvement in customizing the plane as a de facto state-funded personal luxury for the Netanyahu family are the latest in a long series of incidents.
Halbani described a plane for an autocrat rather than a democratically elected leader. Two-thirds of the plane was strictly for the use of the prime minister and his family, with a living space, extensive storage cupboards, a bedroom and a bathroom, a desk for his secretary and a seat for the bodyguards whose job it was to keep people out of the family’s area, while the one-third allotted to senior aides and press had seats that did not recline. Sara had ordered the furniture and the upholstery changed twice during the refurbishment process.
The plane was originally supposed to carry 120 passengers, but can only carry 50 because so much of the space was allotted to the Netanyahus for their personal use. Journalists with the dubious luck of securing one of 10 seats allocated to the press were surprised to discover that not only is there no entertainment system, but that, “for security reasons,” they were denied use of USB outlets and WiFi.
Halbani went on to describe the prime minister and his wife as pathologically cheap exploiters who were an embarrassment to the state of Israel. She recounted an incident when she was forced to use her own credit card to pay for a private restaurant meal, after Sara Netanyahu began to shriek and scream upon being presented with the bill, insisting that she did not have a credit card of her own.
Sara Netanyahu’s reputation for exploitative, irrational behavior goes back many years. In a now-infamous audio clip recorded a decade ago by a staffer and leaked to the media, she berates and screams at an aide who had failed, in her view, to represent her credentials properly to a media outlet: “I am an educated woman! A psy-cho-lo-gist! B.A.! M.A.!” And then: “The wife of the prime minister carries out public duties every day! In her professional capacity!” Followed by a howling, wordless scream.
If only this incident were the worst of her behavior. Alas, it is not. In 2016, Meni Naftali, a senior staffer at the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem, was awarded 170,000 shekels by a labor court that agreed Sara Netanyahu had subjected him to abuse and humiliation. Among the incidents Naftali, who resigned from the job in 2012, described in his testimony: The prime minister’s wife had once swept a glass vase to the floor, smashing it to pieces, because the flowers it contained were not fresh, saying that “this would never happen in the Elysee Palace”; she also called him at 3 a.m. to berate him for purchasing milk in plastic bags instead of in a carton. Another housekeeper said that Sara had once pulled the cloth out from under a table fully laid with dishes, cutlery and an array of food and sent everything flying, because she thought dust from the overhead awning might have contaminated the family meal.
In the documentary film “The Bibi Files,” an array of witnesses, ranging from wealthy patrons to senior aides, testified to the police that the prime minister and his wife had “demanded, not requested” expensive gifts that included a custom-made, diamond-encrusted bracelet for Sara and weekly deliveries of a case of pink champagne. She is also notorious for walking out of restaurants without paying the bill and for staying for weeks at a time at luxurious homes owned by wealthy patrons like the Miami-based Falic family.
The Netanyahus are so notorious abroad for their freeloading that staff at Blair House, the official guest house for visitors to the White House, leaked to the press that, when accompanying the prime minister on his visits to Washington, Sara Netanyahu regularly brought suitcases filled with dirty laundry, which she sent out for dry cleaning at U.S. government expense.
The Netanyahus, say disillusioned former aides, have “no shame.” They are notorious for the demands they make of staff at luxury hotels, for pilfering objects from their rooms and for refusing to pay contractors who carry out repairs and renovations at their private home in Caesarea. Journalist Uri Misgav said that Sara Netanyahu even bills the state for the cost of the family dog’s food.
According to many sources, most notably former senior aide Nir Hefetz, Sara Netanyahu interferes with every aspect of official government business. She decides on media relations and government policy, and also has final approval over all government posts and ministries. If a qualified candidate wants a job, they must be in favor with Sara Netanyahu. If she doesn’t like them, they won’t be appointed. This includes appointments to the most senior intelligence positions.
At a Q&A following the 2024 screening of “The Bibi Files” at Hot Docs, the Toronto documentary film festival, director Alexis Bloom said that she had been unable to convince any senior figures in the Israeli establishment to speak against Sara Netanyahu on the record, in case they might one day aspire to hold public office.