Amir Banai on the backlash from his mother's politics: "I tried to protect myself"
Amir Banai recalls a difficult incident he experienced at school following his mother's political statements and explains why he chose to hide the event from her and never told her about it.
Amir Banai, son of actress and comedian Orna Banai and journalist Aharon Barnea, finds himself today in a very different place than his peers. At only 22 years old, Banai leads an adult lifestyle; he lives with his partner, develops his professional career, and is surrounded by colleagues who understand him and the processes he is going through. Banai shares that he has no friends left from his high school days, and that precisely today, when he is surrounded by people from the profession who are as mature as he is, he feels more understood.
The path to this point was not simple. As part of one of the most famous and privileged dynasties in Israeli culture, Banai had to deal from a young age with the public price of his mother's actions. Orna Banai, known for her political positions and for being one of the leaders of the left-wing camp in Israel, has often drawn fire that was directed directly at her son when he was a child in school.
Banai recalls a painful incident from his elementary school days as part of the hottalk podcast, where he had to endure severe harassment due to his mother's statements during Operation Protective Edge:
"All of my mother's statements over the years really affected me as a child and at school. My mother is a leftist, and she was a pioneer of the left; there were experiences that crossed red lines that I paid for as a child. Once after Protective Edge, when she made a statement, I remember I was in fourth grade, and two guys who were two grades above me came up during recess and started literally saying things to me, cursing me, bothering me, and pushing me. And I wasn't doing anything; I was just trying to protect myself and explain, even though I didn't have much to explain."
Despite the hurt and the difficult feelings that accompanied the incident, the young Banai chose to keep it a secret, out of a desire to protect his mother and spare her the feeling of guilt:
"I never told mom because I don't want her to feel that what she does hurts me. That is part of the price that people who choose to be at the forefront pay."
Today, from the more mature perspective of a young man who lives an independent life with his partner and is building his professional path in the adult world, Amir understands that these experiences shaped his personality. The combination of early maturation in the shadow of his parents' fame and the choice of a stable life in the present make him who he is today: less afraid of criticism and succeeding in creating an independent identity for himself.
