Benzion Netanyahu

Benzion Netanyahu (בֶּנְצִיּוֹן נְתַנְיָהוּ, ; born Benzion Mileikowsky; March 25, 1910 – April 30, 2012) was an Israeli encyclopedist, historian, and medievalist.

He served as a professor of history at Cornell University.

A scholar of Judaic history, he was also an activist in the Revisionist Zionism movement, who lobbied in the United States to support the creation of the Jewish state.

His field of expertise was the history of the Jews in Spain.

He was an editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia and assistant to Benjamin Azkin, Ze'ev Jabotinsky's personal secretary.

Netanyahu was the father of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Yonatan Netanyahu, ex-commander of Sayeret Matkal; and Iddo Netanyahu, a physician, author and playwright.

Benzion Mileikowsky (later Netanyahu) was born in Warsaw in partitioned Poland, which was under Russian control, to Sarah (Lurie) and the writer and Zionist activist Nathan Mileikowsky.

Nathan was a rabbi who toured Europe and the United States, making speeches supporting Zionism.

After Nathan took the family to Mandate Palestine (aliyah) in 1920, the family name was eventually changed to Netanyahu.

After living in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Safed, the family settled in Jerusalem.

Benzion Netanyahu studied at the teachers' seminary and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Although his father was a rabbi, Benzion was secular.

His younger brother, mathematician Elisha Netanyahu, became Dean of Sciences at the Technion.

It was a common practice for Zionist immigrants at the time to adopt a Hebrew name.

Nathan Mileikowsky began signing some of the articles he wrote "Netanyahu," the Hebrew version of his first name, and his son adopted this as his family name.

He also used the pen name "Nitay."

The revisionists were led by Jabotinsky, whose belief in the necessity of an "iron wall" between Israel and its Arab neighbors had influenced Israeli politics since the 1930s.

Netanyahu became a close friend of Abba Ahimeir.

Netanyahu was co-editor of Betar, a Hebrew monthly (1933–34), then editor of the Revisionist Zionist daily newspaper Ha-Yarden in Jerusalem (1934–35) until the British Mandate authorities ordered the paper to cease publication.

He was editor at the Zionist Political Library, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1935–1940.

In 1940, Netanyahu went to New York to serve for a few months as assistant to the secretary of Jabotinsky, who was seeking to build American support for his militant New Zionists.

Jabotinsky died the same year, and Netanyahu became executive director of the New Zionist Organization of America, the political rival of the more moderate Zionist Organization of America.

Two of his aunts were murdered during The Holocaust in 1941.

In 1944, Netanyahu married Tzila Segal (1912–2000), whom he met during his studies in Palestine.

The couple had three sons: Yonatan (1946–76), former commander of Sayeret Matkal, who was killed in action leading Operation Entebbe; Benjamin (b. 1949), Israeli Prime Minister (1996–99, 2009–2021, 2022–); and Iddo (b. 1952), a physician, author and playwright.

The family lived on Haportzim Street in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Katamon.

When the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was published (November 29, 1947), he joined others who signed a petition against the plan.

The petition was published in The New York Times.

During that time, he was active in engaging with Congress members in Washington, D.C.

He held the post until 1948.

As executive director, Netanyahu was one of the Revisionist movement's leaders in the United States during World War II.

At the same time, he pursued his PhD at Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia (now the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania), writing his dissertation on Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508), a Jewish scholar and statesman who opposed the banishment of Jews from Spain.

Netanyahu believed in Greater Israel.

In 1949, he returned to Israel, where he tried to start a political career but failed.

Relentlessly hawkish, he believed that the "vast majority of Israeli Arabs would choose to exterminate us if they had the option to do so".

In his younger days, he had been strongly in favour of the idea of Arab transfer out of Palestine.

Tzila Netanyahu died in 2000.

Benzion Netanyahu studied medieval history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

During his studies, he became active in Revisionist Zionism, a movement of people who had split from their mainstream Zionist counterparts, believing those in the mainstream were too conciliatory to the British authorities governing Palestine, and espousing a more militant, right-wing Jewish nationalism than the one advocated by the Labour Zionists who led Israel in its early years.

In 2009, he told Maariv: "The tendency to conflict is the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won't allow him to compromise. It doesn't matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war."