Benjamin Netanyahu's son changes his first and last name
Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has changed his first and last name to Yonatan Hon, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, tax documents show that until December 2024 he was listed under the old name, while this year, with the same identification number, he was registered under the new name.
The same fictitious address also appears in the documents, registered as "Balfour 0".
Yair Netanyahu has previously used different variations of his surname. On social media, he has been introduced as "Yair Hoon." The surname Hon is derived from the original surname of his maternal grandfather, Shmuel Hon, Sara Netanyahu's father, who later changed his surname to Ben Artzi.
The name change comes at a time when the Netanyahu surname is under intense political and legal pressure. Benjamin Netanyahu faces international criticism and an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He also continues to face corruption trials in Israel.
Yair Netanyahu has also been the subject of controversy over his activities in the US and his ties to far-right figures. In 2018, a recording was released in which he boasted in front of a strip club that his father had helped broker a multi-billion dollar gas deal that benefited a wealthy businessman.
This is not the first time a member of the Netanyahu family has changed his name. Yair's brother, Avner Netanyahu, changed his last name to Avi Segal about five years ago and bought an apartment in Oxford, England, under that name. Benjamin Netanyahu himself, during his stay in the United States in the 1980s, used the name Ben Nitai.
The tradition of changing surnames in the family goes back even further. Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion Mileikowsky, changed his surname to Netanyahu after moving from Poland to Palestine under the British Mandate in the 1920s. According to Haaretz, this was part of a wider practice of many Zionist settlers replacing European surnames with Hebrew names. /Telegraph/
