Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, filed Aug. 11 an official police complaint alleging threats to her life and sexual harassment. This was by no means a routine occurrence; in fact, no wife of an Israeli premier has ever been known to make such a complaint to the police.
For some two hours, Netanyahu presented the police investigator dispatched to the prime minister’s official residence with a litany of the threats and harassment to which she had been subjected. One of the key pieces of proof she cited was an obscene tweet by a man who described how he planned to rape her. She also presented the investigator with photos of the ongoing demonstrations taking place outside the official residence in Jerusalem in recent weeks, at which several protesters held aloft inflated balloons in the shape of penises. The balloons were covered with lewd comments such as “Bibi [Netanyahu] is impotent” and “Come, Sara’leh, let’s get out of here,” echoing a remark that has become a cult classic that Netanyahu made to his wife in 1997 after complaining to reporters about constant attacks on his family. Yet another balloon addressed the couple’s son Yair, saying “Yair is a dick.”