In Israel, huge swathes of the population think Sara Netanyahu, wife of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is evil incarnate, and this week she’s once again been the subject of close scrutiny over her use of the public purse.
Sara Netanyahu has for years been alienating her fellow Israelis and, while she has managed to cloak much of her personal life in closely guarded secrecy, almost everyone has an immovable opinion on her. These range from her being maligned and misunderstood, to being a controlling, manipulative Lady Macbeth-type witch who has nobody’s interests at heart other than her own. Nobody, perhaps apart from her husband and a few disgruntled former employees, seems to really know what she’s like.
What we do know is that she has had rather a bad week. On May 29, a police investigation was wrapped up, resulting in the announcement of a recommendation that she be prosecuted for fraud. And on May 31 she lost a court case brought by one of those disgruntled former employees, in which she was found guilty of “abusive” and “humiliating” treatment.
The former staff member, maintenance worker Guy Eliyahu, had been employed at the Netanyahus’s official residence, and the judge, Justice Dita Pruginin, accepted his account of the treatment he was subjected to by Netanyahu, ruling that he was “exposed to abusive treatment at the residence, which was reflected in reprimands, yelling, humiliation, excessive and unreasonable demands”. She even blamed him for her weight gain, accusing him of providing the wrong food.
Eliyahu was not the first ex- staffer to complain of harsh and unreasonable treatment at Netanyahu’s hands, so it’s quite familiar territory. But it’s the fraud case that has everyone talking. Last December, she was questioned by officials within Lahav 433 (Israel’s police financial fraud unit) over allegations that she was misappropriating government funds for personal use, such as paying for private catering at the family residence in Caesarea and having work carried out on the property, all funded by public money.
On his Facebook page, however, her husband came to her defence, saying: “The various allegations that have been aired by the media outlets will prove to be untrue, just as has happened with all the allegations that have been directed against the Netanyahu family for years.”
Whatever the truth is, officials appear determined to uncover it and the strain was beginning to show on the prime minister’s face this week. This is, after all, a man who a significant number of Israelis believe to be under the direct control of his wife.
What do we know about this controversial figure? What has made her the woman she is? The basics can be discovered by checking out her curriculum vitae on the Prime Minister’s Office website, which mentions that she was born in November 1958 in the northern Israeli town of Tivon, near Haifa. She is the daughter of the late Chava and Shmuel Ben-Artzi, who was a poet, writer and teacher, and she is one of four siblings, all of whom have enjoyed a great deal of personal success. What you might not expect to read, however, is that Sara Netanyahu is “an expert child psychologist at the Jerusalem Municipality Psychological Service”.
Completing high school in 1977, she was reportedly an ambitious teenager and began working as a correspondent for Ma'ariv LaNoar, a weekly, teen-focused magazine. The same year in which she left school, she entered military service, working as a "psychotechnical diagnostician" in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) Intelligence Unit for two years. Once the draft was over, she returned to her studies, completing a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1984 and a master's degree the following year.
It was after completing that master’s degree, while writing her thesis, that she worked as a flight attendant for the El Al airline, which is how she eventually met Benjamin Netanyahu. They wed in 1991, but before that she was married to Doron Neuberger, divorcing after seven years together in 1987.
In October 1996, it emerged that Neuberger had plans to publish a “tell-all” book about their marriage. According to Israel’s Channel Two Television, this was instigated by his outrage at seeing a photograph of his ex-wife, in which she appeared to be looking at official, classified documents that impacted “national security”. Benjamin Netanyahu’s lawyer claimed she was reviewing a personal itinerary, nothing to do with state secrets.
The detail the book was to go into was said to be embarrassing, but it never saw light of day. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported in 1996: “Neuberger said that when the Netanyahus found out about his plans, he was offered money to destroy the draft. The Netanyahus’s version is that Neuberger demanded US$1 million [Dh3.67m] to shut up.” One of Mrs Netanyahu’s tactics was to send a 93-page letter to Neuberger’s parents – there really was no way she was going to let those secrets out and, whether or not money changed hands, to this day they remained untold.
Sara is Benjamin Netanyahu’s third wife, and it was in 1993, only two years after their marriage, that what is alleged to have been a massive power shift occurred between the couple. She took an anonymous phone call, during which the caller threatened that if he didn’t withdraw from a leadership bid, a tape would be “leaked”, proving that he had cheated on her with another woman.
Learning of this development, the prime minister headed to Israel's Channel 1 television studios and, in a panicked broadcast, admitted his infidelity. What would his wife do in the face of such public humiliation? Allegedly she got him to sign a legal, attested document that regulates the power between them. Writing for the Haaretz newspaper in 2013, Asher Schechter said it's a widely held belief that this document gives Netanyahu "overwhelming influence over her husband's career".
Schechter went on to say that “Sara Netanyahu’s love-hate-hate-hate-hate-hate relationship with the Israeli public truly began when her husband was first elected prime minister in 1996. She quickly became a political liability for him, derided in the press as a controlling, obsessive wife.” Perhaps that ambitious streak she was showing while in high school had properly come home to roost.
There is no shortage of anecdotes when it comes to Sara Netanyahu but one that Schechter shared was noteworthy, especially in light of the alleged power shift with her husband.
"Then there's the feature about the Netanyahus in July's Vanity Fair [2013]," he wrote. "In it, contributing editor David Margolick describes a peculiar scene he witnessed in November 2011: Sara's father, Shmuel Ben-Artzi, had just died, and ministers, tycoons and other national leaders flocked to the 'shiva', or Jewish mourning ritual.
“According to Margolick, they were not there for the prime minister – they had come to see Sara, not so much out of love or respect. ‘I have no choice,’ he quoted an Israeli tycoon as saying. ‘She’s running the show in Israel. She can make or break anyone.’”
In the 1999 elections, Benjamin Netanyahu was defeated by Ehud Barak and he temporarily retired from politics, disappearing from the public eye. But its gaze never shifted from his wife, who seemed to be getting more controversial with every passing week. The allegations of financial corruption began to surface during this period, with the couple reportedly having received services for their home from a contractor, which were later put on a state expense account.
“Also,” noted Schechter in 2013, “the police claimed the couple illegally removed gifts worth hundreds of thousands of shekels that they had received during Netanyahu’s premiership from the prime minister’s residence. They were never charged, but former attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein was highly critical of their behaviour.”
The court cases, the stories, the accusations – they’ve all just multiplied in recent times. While her husband has been busying himself with violating Article 47 of the fourth Geneva Convention, his wife’s antics have been a gossip-fuelled distraction
Little wonder, then, that she is routinely described as Israel’s most hated woman and has a reputation as the country’s own Imelda Marcos. Naturally, the official line is that these innumerable accusations over the years have been vicious lies conjured up by their enemies. But there’s a saying that where there’s smoke there’s fire, and the alarms have not stopped sounding for more than 15 years. It’s unlikely they ever will.
weekend@thenational.ae
MATCH INFO
Day 2 at the Gabba
Australia 312-1
Warner 151 not out, Burns 97, Labuschagne 55 not out
Pakistan 240
Shafiq 76, Starc 4-52
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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What: 11th edition of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship
When: December 27-29, 2018
Confirmed: men: Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Kevin Anderson, Dominic Thiem, Hyeon Chung, Karen Khachanov; women: Venus Williams
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ae, Virgin megastores or call 800 86 823
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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Yemen's Bahais and the charges they often face
The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
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Title: General Practitioner with a speciality in cardiology
Previous jobs: Worked in well-known hospitals Jaslok and Breach Candy in Mumbai, India
Education: Medical degree from the Government Medical College in Nagpur
How it all began: opened his first clinic in Ajman in 1993
Family: a 90-year-old mother, wife and two daughters
Remembers a time when medicines from India were purchased per kilo
