Netanyahu, a habitual offender when it comes to meeting world leaders

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is notorious for his bad behaviour, corruption scandals, divisive politics, and now genocide of besieged Palestinians in Gaza.

So, when the former UK prime minister Boris Johnson dropped a bombshell claim, accusing Netanyahu of bugging his private toilet in 2017, the details of which Johnson says are in his upcoming memoir, it did not come as a surprise for many.

Johnson's claim is in line with Netanyahu track record of bad table manners, bugging foreign sites, and disrespect towards the leaders of other nations — especially those opening their doors to him.

TRT World explores few instances of Netanyahu's misconduct:

Bugging UK PM's toilet

After releasing excerpts of his forthcoming memoir, "Unleashed", to the daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson on Thursday hugged media headlines for coming forward about having his private living quarters bugged by Netanyahu.

"Thither Bibi repaired for a while, and it may or may not be a coincidence but I am told that later, when they were doing a regular sweep for bugs, they found a listening device in the thunderbox (toilet)," Johnson said.

Johnson told the Telegraph to get a more in-depth picture of what he implies by that excerpt, "I think everything you need to know about that episode is in the book."

Netanyahu brings dirty laundry from Israel to US

The Netanyahus are notorious for their tendency to arrive in the United States on official state visits with suitcases of dirty laundry for White House launderers to clean free of charge.

In 2020, Washington Post reported that Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu have developed a reputation for lugging bags and suitcases of dirty clothes on foreign trips to be laundered at another country's expense — a practice WaPo reported then — was noticed by staff at the White House guesthouse.

"The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean," the paper quoted an unnamed US official as saying at the time. "After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional."

According to Business Insider, after Netanyahu's visit to the White House on September 15, 2020, the Israeli embassy in Washington DC said there was "nothing abnormal about Netanyahu's washing demands."

Claims of the Netanyahus laundering their dirty clothes abroad also surfaced during probe of state funds misuse by the duo.

Investigators during the probe heard that Sara Netanyahu would take four or five suitcases of dirty laundry on official trips for washing or dry cleaning at hotels, paid for by the state.

Planting listening devices near White House

In 2019, then US government concluded that since 2017 Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington DC.

"The Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel's behaviour," Politico reported at the time citing former American officials.

"The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as 'StingRays,' mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use," Politico reported.

"We have a directive, I have a directive: No intelligence work in the United States, no spies," Netanyahu told media.

Netanyahu serves dessert in shoe to Japan PM and his wife

In 2018, Netanyahu hosted a dinner for Japan's then prime minister Shinzo Abe and Akie Abe, his wife.

Netanyahu secured celebrity chef Segev Moshe for the dinner, and for their final course, Moshe presented their Japanese guests with chocolate pralines served in "two pairs of men's black brogues, size unknown."

“There is no culture in the world where you put shoes on a table," an outraged Japanese diplomat told Israeli media.

"What exactly did the illustrious chef Segev think to himself. We can't understand what he was trying to say here. If it is humour then we don't think it is funny. I can tell you we were offended on behalf of our prime minister."