Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to distance himself from his son Yair’s tweet saying “screw you” to French President Emmanuel Macron after the latter said Paris could recognize a Palestinian state in the coming months.

“I love my son Yair, a true Zionist worried for the future of the country. Like every citizen, he is also entitle to his personal opinion, though the style of his response to President Macron’s tweets calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state is unacceptable to me,” Netanyahu writes in Hebrew on X.

• The premier says Macron is making “a terrible mistake” by “continuing to advance the idea of a Palestinian state in the heart of our land whose ambition is the destruction of the State of Israel,” noting neither Hamas nor the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority have condemned the October 7, 2023, terror atrocities.

“We will not risk our existence because of detached illusions and we will not accept moral preaching about establishing a Palestinian state that will endanger Israel’s existence from those who are opposed to giving independence to Corsica, New Caledonia, French Guyana and additional territories,” Netanyahu adds in an echo of his son’s remarks.

Source: TOI

Header: FILE – In this Jan. 23, 2020, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second from left, and son Yair, left, pose for a photo in Tel Aviv, Israel, ahead of the World Holocaust Forum. As the scandal-plagued prime minister stands trial for corruption, his 28-year-old son has emerged as a driving force in a counterattack against critics and the state institutions prosecuting the longtime Israeli leader. A favorite of the prime minister’s nationalistic base and far right leaders around the world, Yair Netanyahu has become a fixture in the news. (Aleksey Nikolskyi/Sputnik Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)