Former British Prime Minister Bois Johnson has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bugged his personal toilet.
In his new memoir, Unleashed, Johnson said that in 2017, when he was foreign secretary, Netanyahu used his private bathroom at the Foreign Office during one of his visits to Britain.
He described as the bathroom as a “secret annex… a bit like the gents in a posh London club”.
Johnson details how Netanyahu “repaired for a while” and later security “found a listening device in the thunderbox”. “It may or may not be a coincidence,” he wrote.
It is unclear whether Britain confronted the Israeli government about the incident.
Johnson wrote that he felt like “Willy Wonka” as he took the Israeli prime minister around the Foreign Office. He showed him a walnut desk and said Arthur Balfour, a previous foreign secretary, had used it to author the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which aimed at “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
According to Johnson, Netanyahu said “wow” and seemed “genuinely awestruck”.
But in fact, Johnson believed, the walnut desk was unlikely to have been used by Balfour.
He then claimed to have the “very pen that he used”, before pulling a biro pen our of his drawer. It is likely that Netanyahu realised at this point that he was joking.
Around a similar time, US officials accused Israel of bugging the White House.
Washington reportedly concluded that Israel was likely responsible for the placement of cellphone surveillance devices found near the White House and other sensitive locations in Washington.
US officials believed they were intended to spy on President Donald Trump. But Israel’s embassy in the US called the claim “nonsense”.
Later, in 2020, White House staff alleged that Netanyahu and his wife Sara regularly brought bags and suitcases of dirty clothes on foreign trips to be laundered at the US’ expense.
“After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional,” said an unnamed US official. The Israeli prime minister’s office denied the accusation.
In 2016, Netanyahu had successfully launched a legal bid to have his domestic laundry bills kept private.
