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Netanyahu, alone at the top, makes a friend on the beach

Having distanced aides and security chiefs he no longer trusts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become a very lonely leader.
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What was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doing in the hours leading up to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the “father of Iran’s atomic bomb”? It turns out he was all by himself on a cliff overlooking the sea, near his home in Caesarea. He sat watching the waves in a black T-shirt and track pants, surrounded by a tight ring of security and snipers.

A few of those mesmerizing moments were captured for posterity by a 9-year-old boy named Uri, who was walking along the coast with his father on that Friday afternoon. The beach was empty because of the winter weather. It was his father who first realized that something was going on. He couldn’t help but notice the armored limos and the unusually high level of security just 200 meters away, so he told his son, “It must be Netanyahu.” Feeling particularly animated that day, Uri grabbed his father’s phone and started running toward the cliff. When Netanyahu saw him, he gestured to him to come over and asked his security detail to let the boy through. For the next few minutes, Netanyahu was filmed talking to a child, who was so close to the heavily guarded prime minister that he could actually touch him.

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