The secret recordings of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son Yair, made in 2015 and leaked earlier this week on the Hadashot news program, were discussed at length in a cabinet meeting on the state budget on Thursday.
Yair Netanyahu was recorded, allegedly by a driver from the Prime Minister's Office, in 2015, during a night out drinking with friends. On the tapes, he can be heard making offensive remarks about women and comments about Israel's gas framework deal.
Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev said, "A driver cannot record people under [government] security. I'm willing to forgo my security detail, but it's forced on me, and then they go and pimp out recordings?"
Netanyahu agreed: "Lines were crossed in terms of security [protocol] and the media and the issue is been probed by legal officials in the Prime Minister's Office."
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said that she would look into the possibility of submitting a bill that would prevent similar incidents. Shaked also raised the issue in a speech to the Globes Israel Business Conference, where she said that "it's very dangerous that people in the vicinity are making recordings, which then get published. No one wants it to be this way. Recordings of private conversations are dangerous."
Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and National Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz agreed.
"The driver who made the recording must face consequences immediately, so similar incidents won't ever take place," Steinitz said.
Levin added: "An act like this leads faith in personal security details to crumble and casts doubt on the entire system of personal security. Every minister feels under threat."
Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel sent a letter to Netanyahu in which he announced that if the Shin Bet security agency did not investigate the matter of the Yair Netanyahu recordings following the leak, he would no longer accept his own security detail.
"I am contacting you as someone who oversees the Ministerial Committee on the Shin Bet and about the decision on security for ministers to instruct the head of the Shin Bet to investigate the recording of the protectee Yair Netanyahu and its leak [to the media] immediately," Ariel wrote.
"I intend to wait until the end of the month to hear whether there has been an investigation and what its results are. I am informing you that after that date, I do not intend to use government-provided security," Ariel stated.
Earlier this week, Netanyahu responded to the report of his son's recorded conversation, and said, "As far as I know, the driver from the Prime Minister's office secretly recorded people with security details and tried to sell the tapes to, as far as I know, at least two main media figures for thousands of dollars, but they refused.
"I think that Channel 2, which has an obligation to transparency and the public's right to know, should state whether it purchased the secret recording and, if so, how much it paid," Netanyahu said.
