A report by the Calcalist financial daily, revealing a previously unreported UK home purchase by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son under a different name, was temporarily pulled from the internet on Wednesday following intervention by the Israeli military censor — a rare and controversial move that drew swift backlash from media watchdogs.

The article, published on the front page of Calcalist’s print edition and also online, detailed how Avner Netanyahu, the prime minister’s younger son, bought a £502,500 ($680,000) apartment in Oxford in October 2022 while studying at the university there.

At the time of purchase, the cost amounted to approximately NIS 1.98 million — a particularly favorable pound-to-shekel exchange rate window.

The article noted that had the apartment been purchased “just 10 days before or after, it would have been worth more than NIS 2 million,” the threshold which, at the time, would have required mandatory reporting of overseas property to Israeli tax authorities.

Within two hours of the article’s online publication, the military censor ordered Calcalist to remove the piece — a move typically reserved for content deemed a threat to national security. The censor’s intervention in a story involving the prime minister’s family and foreign real estate triggered widespread criticism.

The Union of Journalists in Israel released a statement saying that censorship must only be used “when there is a true fear of harm to the safety of the State of Israel — and no one can say that that is the case regarding real estate stories in Calcalist that are connected to one of the prime minister’s children.”

It further warned that the censor’s actions represented “a serious blow to journalists’ trust in the decisions of the censor’s staff,” and called on the unit’s commander to reverse the decision and clarify its guidelines.

Following negotiations between the censor’s office and Calcalist, the article was reinstated online, albeit with several key details removed, including the exact date of the sale.

The purchase, made without a mortgage and reportedly funded by the younger Netanyahu’s parents, was conducted under the name Avi Avner Segal — a legal alias Avner adopted based on his paternal grandmother’s maiden name.

Netanyahu told Calcalist the name change was fully above board and registered with the Interior Ministry. “I changed my name on my ID card at the Israeli Interior Ministry, and then changed my passport and driver’s license. It’s a package deal,” he said.

Netanyahu emphasized that the purchase was legal and fully declared: “We reported everything that was necessary to the tax authorities in Israel and Britain,” he said. “All of my conduct was legal, both here and there.”

He said that the name change was prompted by security concerns. At the time of the purchase, his father was serving as opposition leader, and a request for Shin Bet protection while studying abroad had been denied.

“I didn’t have security at the time,” he told Calcalist. “I knew that if I walked around with that name, in another country with Muslims, I would get stabbed by the first person who heard it at a train station.”