Yair Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has changed his name to Yonatan Hun, according to a report published Wednesday by Haaretz.
The newspaper reported that Netanyahu’s son changed his name during the past year and a half, citing Tax Authority documents showing the change under the same Israeli ID number.
Yair Netanyahu
(Photo: Yair Sagi)
According to the report, his tax withholding approvals were issued in December 2024 under his previous name, Yair Netanyahu. This year, the same identifying details, including a fictional address listed as Balfour 0, appeared under the new name.
The report follows past cases in which members of the Netanyahu family used different names abroad.
Only a day earlier, Prime Minister Netanyahu was asked on comedian Ben Ben Baruch’s podcast why he and his wife, Sara, had not named one of their sons after his brother Yonatan, known as Yoni, who was killed while commanding Israel’s 1976 hostage rescue raid in Entebbe, Uganda. The mission, codenamed Operation Thunderbolt and known in Israel as Operation Entebbe, was later renamed Operation Yonatan in Hebrew in his memory.
“On purpose,” Netanyahu said. “Sara and I decided not to do so because you place a very heavy burden on a child. We definitely did not want that to happen. He fell 50 years ago, and there is not a day that I do not think of him.”
Israel has occasionally renamed high-profile military and police operations for commanders killed in action, turning the fallen operator’s name into part of the national memory of the mission. Similarly to Operation Yonatan, the June 2024 rescue of four Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity in Nuseirat, Gaza, was renamed Operation Arnon after Yamam police commando Arnon Zmora, who was fatally wounded during the operation.
The prime minister’s other son, Avner Netanyahu, also changed his name in recent years. When he purchased an apartment in England near London, he did so under the name Avi Avner Segal.
The apartment was bought in 2022, and according to Britain’s land registry, the purchase price was 502,500 pounds. The sum was transferred to the seller in full, with no charge registered against the property, meaning no loan or mortgage was taken for the purchase.
Around the time of the purchase, Avner Netanyahu began studying for a master’s degree at Regent’s Park College in Oxford. He also registered for the degree, in the history of the Near East and archaeology, under his new identity, obscuring his connection to his father.
On an internal profile page at the institution, his name appeared as Avi Segal, and the same name also appeared in his college email address.
Yair Netanyahu has previously used different names on social media accounts, including Jesse Nathan, Yair Nathan and Yair Hun. Haaretz noted that Hun was the original family name of Sara Netanyahu’s father, Shmuel, before he Hebraized it to Ben-Artzi.
Similarly, Segal was the maiden name of Tzila, the prime minister’s mother, before she married historian and prominent Revisionist Zionist thinker Benzion Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Netanyahu himself also changed his name in the past. During his years living in the United States, he identified himself as Ben Nitay.
Under Israeli law, a person may change their name once every seven years. Anyone seeking another name change before that period ends must submit a written request to the Population and Immigration Authority.
If the requested change is a return to a previous name, or the addition of a previous name to the current one, the request is sent to the office director, who may approve the change even if seven years have not passed. During that period, the previous name appears on the appendix to the person’s ID card and in parentheses in the passport.