Yair Netanyahu: Utopian kibbutzim doomed like Nazi Germany
“Kibbutzim are something that doesn’t exist outside of North Korea,” Yair Netanyahu said during a recent radio interview.
By GIL HOFFMANYair Netanyahu makes a stormy appearance at Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, December 2018. (photo credit: AVSHALOM SHOSHANI)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair, caused uproar on Saturday when he criticized the kibbutz movement by comparing it to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and North Korea. “Kibbutzim don’t exist anywhere else in the world outside Israel, except for North Korea,” he said in an interview with the right-wing radio station Galei Israel.“It’s an idea for a utopian society. We know how ideas about utopian societies end. In the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany there were attempts to [create] utopian societies. It never ends well, attempts to create a humane society.”Agriculture Minister Alon Schuster, of Kibbutz Mefalsim in the Gaza periphery, wrote to Yair Netanyahu on Twitter on Sunday: “The ignorance you displayed shamefully insults the intelligence of your father and grandfathers.”Schuster called on him to show respect to kibbutzniks.“This movement built hundreds of communities in the Land of Israel, especially in the periphery and on our borders, led our agricultural advances, established terrific industry and absorbed hundreds of immigrants,” Schuster tweeted on Sunday.“The Kibbutz movement was the basis for the defensive force that formed Israel with endless blood and tears.Maariv columnist Avi Benayahu, a member of Kibbutz Lehavot Haviva, mocked the prime minister’s son on Saturday morning, saying that he shared the quote “as a service to the kibbutzniks who were taken to the kibbutz against their will.”At the end of September, a complaint was filed against Yair Netanyahu for incitement to murder Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit and obstruction of justice, in response to a tweet in which he wrote that the attorney-general posed an existential threat to Israel and was trying to “destroy it from within.”Yair had to apologize recently for suggesting on social media that a top journalist had gained her post by sleeping her way to the top. But he did not apologize for expressing hope that elderly activists protesting against his father would die of coronavirus or for comparing police investigating his father to the Mafia, Stasi and Gestapo.
When Facebook removed his posts in December 2018, targeting Muslims and Palestinians, due to its policy against hate speech, Yair reposted a screenshot of the posts that led the social media giant to suspend his account and Yair to call on Twitter for an international campaign against Facebook.The previous year, a meme he posted on Facebook targeting left-wing Jewish philanthropist George Soros was praised by notorious white supremacist and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, who tweeted, “Welcome to the club, Yair – absolutely amazing, wow, just wow.”
