Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's family has responded harshly to the release on News 2 of audio from 2015 in which Netanyahu's son Yair told the son of gas tycoon Kobi Maimon that the prime minister arranged $20 billion for his father, two weeks before the signing of an agreement between the government and owners of Israel's offshore natural gas rigs.
The Netanyahus claimed the recording was edited and taken out of context, and noted it was a conversation between drunk teenageers, saying it the audio was not worthy of a gossip broadcast, let alone the evening news. They also took the media to task for a witch hunt designed to bring down the government, with unprecedented coverage of a prime minister's family, compared to the lack of coverage of the negative side of relatives of previous prime ministers.