Benzion Netanyahu, Father of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Dies At 102

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benzion-netanyahuThe father of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Benzion Netanyahu, passed away this morning at his Yerushalayim home at the age of 102.

Benzion was an Israeli historian and professor emeritus at Cornell University. He served as a secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky and was a  leader in the Zionist Movement in the United States. During the 1950s he served as editor for the Encyclopaedia Hebraica.

Mr. Netanyahu was born in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire, on March 25, 1910 as Benzion Milikovsky. In 1920, his family immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, where he studied at the David Yellin Teachers’ College and later at the Hebrew University in Yerushalayim.

As an academic, he specialized in the field of Medieval Spanish Jewry, writing a book about the Ababanel and essays on the Spanish Inquisition and the Marranos. He developed a theory according to which the Marranos converted, not under compulsion, but out of a desire to integrate into Christian society – but were pushed into being Marranos by continued persecution due to racism, and not out of pure religious persecution, as was previously believed. Netanyahu rejected the myth that the Marranos lived double lives, claiming that the idea grew out of Inquisition documents. He later left the Israeli academy and became a professor emeritus at Cornell University.

Later, he became close with the leaders of Revisionist Zionism, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Abba Achimeir and others. He spent a significant portion of his life in the United States, and became Jabotinsky’s personal secretary, but never got involved in Israeli politics. He gained fame for his angry prophesies before the Second World War about the fate of the Jews.

He will most likely be remembered for his great influence on the worldview of his son, Bibi. The prime minister frequently mentions his father in speeches, speaking of what he has learned from his father, and of the experiences, both exciting and difficult, that the family has endured over the years.

In a televised interview two years ago, he uttered a sentence which distilled his worldview: “We are very simply in danger of extermination today. Not just existential danger, but truly in danger of extermination. They think the extermination, the Holocaust, is over, it isn’t, it goes on all the time.”

“I have always said that a necessary condition for the existence of any living body, and for a nation, is the ability to identify a danger in time, a characteristic which our nation lost in the Diaspora. You taught me, Father, how to correctly view reality, how to understand what it contains within it and draw the necessary conclusions. It certainly wasn’t an easy thing for you, because there were always those who did not see as you did, ridiculed, laughed at or belittled your conclusions. But I believe that in this, as well, you taught me to distinguish between the important and the unimportant, and concentrate on the important,” said Bibi Netanyahu. “The same foresight led Father to say dozens of years ago that the threat to world peace would emerge from the same parts of the Muslim world where oil, terrorism and nuclear go together. And it is also what led him to tell me in the early 1990s that the Muslim extremists would not rest and would attempt to bring down the Twin Towers in New York, a prediction that I included in one my books in 1995.”

“And Father is a smart man, very smart. This wonderful ability allowed him to see time after time what others didn’t. Even if they ignored his diagnoses and warnings, over time his ideas and diagnoses spread and became the common wisdom, without the collective knowing where they came from. Because for Father it was never important to get ownership or credit for his forecasts. He was interested in contributing to the security of his people, not in his own reputation.”

The prime minister also recounted the greatest trauma in his father’s life – the death of Yoni, his son, during the 1976 Entebbe operation. “And then something happened which changed the course of our lives forever. Your life, like our lives, was divided in half: before and after that terrible day on which Yoni fell.”

Netanyahu has spoken of how he traveled to deliver the news of his brother Yoni’s death during Operation Entebbe, while they were both living in the United States. “It was the longest, most difficult journey of my life,” said Netanyahu. “Since then, our family life changed drastically. Today, there is life before Yoni’s death, and life after Yoni’s death,” explained Netanyahu.

Speaking about that eight-hour journey from Boston to Cornell University, where his father taught, after he received the news of Yoni’s death from his brother Ido, Netanyahu has said, “After that difficult journey, I reached the path leading to the house, and I saw my father walking in the living room. He looked out the window, our gazes met, and a look of surprise was on his face. When I entered the house, he asked: ‘Bibi, what are you doing here?’ A second later he understood, and cried out in pain. His cry was followed by that of my mother – I will not forget those cries” told Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has said the most important message he learned from his father is that, “whoever doesn’t know his past, can’t understand his present, and therefore can’t plan for his future. He predicted the attacks on the Twin Towers back in the early 90s. He also predicted the threat of tyrannical Islamist regimes attempting to attain nuclear weapons,” said Netanyahu.

In an interview with Haaretz Magazine in 1998, Benzion Netanyahu predicted a difficult national course due to the combination of the Arab threat and the weakness of Israeli public opinion. He believed in true peace in our midst, but denounced any retreat, and saw the left as an existential threat. He attacked the general complacency he saw in Israel, which reminded him of the blind eyes turned toward the Nazi regime. Benzion Netanyahu denied he had any influence on his son’s decisions.

{Haaretz/Matzav.com Israel, with reporting by Israel Hayom}


18 COMMENTS

  1. i once met him. A very nice man. Well meaning.

    May his grandchildren, who are religious, bring much nachas and zechuyot for his neshama.

  2. He’s right that initially the Maranos converted in order to integrate into society, way before the expulsion. He’s wrong in thinking that they did not lead double lives. Some perhaps did not, but many did, as do some of their descendants in a watered down form today.

  3. #1 wrote “BDE just 2 weeks ago Matzav reported his 102 birthday party, how sad!”

    thats what happens when people make ayin hara’s & start reporting peoples ages & birthdays. it puts a klala on them.

    MAY MATZAV NEVER report anyone with ages so everyone can live until at least 120

  4. His thesis does NOT besmirch the marranos, in fact his “Marranos of Spain” is entirely based on the responsa (Teshuvos) of Rabbinic scholars: The RambaM, the RashbA, the Rivash, the Tashbez, the Rashbash, Rabbeinu Asher, Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, and draws the logical conclusion that some marranos in later years became full-fledged christians without ties to Judaism. Not only that, the trend among the later Rishonim was to treat Anussim and children of Anussim as complete gentiles, requiring complete conversions. Some going as far as to say they got their just desserts during the inquisition for leaving Judaism.

    –I read the book

    Whether you agree or disagree with his positions, he nevertheless was a monumental scholar, and I would posit that his knowledge of Rishonim and their responsa ranks up there with premiere Poskim.

    read any of his books: Abravanel, the Marranos of Spain, and the Spanish inquisition..and you’ll became a talmid chacham.

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