Ruth Bar recounts Benjamin Netanyahu affair, Likud primaries, political ascent
Dr. Ruth Bar reflects on her past as a strategic adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and the 1993 scandal involving their extramarital affair. The piece explores the political climate of the Likud party during Netanyahu's early ascent.
Why it matters
This historical account provides context on the personal and political challenges that shaped the career of a long-standing world leader.
Dr. Ruth Bar is the most famous anonymous woman you have never heard of. On January 14, 1993, Benjamin Netanyahu, sweating and somber, burst into the studio of Israel's Channel 1 television to confess live on air that he had conducted an extramarital affair with the strategic adviser working for him in the race for the Likud leadership. That woman was Ruth Bar.The primaries to succeed Yitzhak Shamir as Likud chairman were then in full swing, after Shamir's defeat by Yitzhak Rabin in the 1992 election. Netanyahu's rival, and the man standing in his way of winning the Likud leadership, was David Levy.
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