Benzion Netanyahu

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Benzion Netanyahu
PhD
)
Occupation(s)Encyclopedist, historian, medievalist
Spouse
Tzila Segal
​
​
(m. 1944; died 2000)​
[1]
Children
Parent(s)Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky
Sarah (Lurie) Mileikowsky
RelativesElisha Netanyahu (brother)
Nathan Netanyahu (nephew)

Benzion Netanyahu (

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.

Biography

Benzion Mileikowsky (later Netanyahu) was born in

Technion. It was a common practice for Zionist immigrants at the time to adopt a Hebrew name.[5] 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." Two of his aunts were murdered during The Holocaust in 1941.[6]

In 1944, Netanyahu married Tzila Segal (1912–2000), whom he met during his studies in Palestine. The couple had three sons:

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.[7] Tzila Netanyahu died in 2000.[8]

Zionist activism

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. 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.[9]

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)[2] until the British Mandate authorities ordered the paper to cease publication.[dubious – discuss][10] He was editor at the Zionist Political Library, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1935–1940.

In 1940, Netanyahu went to

New Zionist Organization of America, the political rival of the more moderate Zionist Organization of America. He held the post until 1948.[11][12]

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

dissertation on Isaac Abarbanel
(1437–1508), a Jewish scholar and statesman who opposed the banishment of Jews from Spain.

Netanyahu believed in

Congress members in Washington, D.C.

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".[14] In his younger days, he had been strongly in favour of the idea of Arab transfer out of Palestine.[15]

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."[16][17]

Academic career

Having previously struggled to fit into Israeli academia without success, perhaps for a combination of personal and political reasons,

Hebrew University, his mentor Joseph Klausner recommended him to be one of the editors of the “Encyclopaedia Hebraica” in Hebrew, and upon Klausner's death, Netanyahu became chief editor, in tandem with professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz
.

He returned to Dropsie College, first as professor of Hebrew language and literature and chair of the department (1957–66), then as professor of medieval Jewish history and Hebrew literature (1966–68). Subsequently, he moved first to the

professor emeritus
at Cornell University.

Continuing his interest in Medieval Spanish Jewry,

Marranos. He developed a theory according to which the Marranos converted to Christianity not under compulsion but out of a desire to integrate into Christian society. However, as New Christians they continued to be persecuted due to racism, not purely for religious reasons, as previously believed. He argued that what was new in the 15th century was the Spanish monarchy's practice of defining Jews not religiously, but racially, by the principle of limpieza de sangre, purity of blood, which served as a model for 20th-century racial theories. Netanyahu rejected the idea that the Marranos lived double lives, claiming that this theory arose from Inquisition documents.[19]

Netanyahu is perhaps best known for his magnum opus, Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain. His publisher and friend Jason Epstein wrote of the book:

The 1,400-page work of scholarship overturned[20] centuries of misunderstanding, and predictably it was faintly praised and in a few cases angrily denounced or simply ignored by a threatened scholarly establishment. Dispassionate scholars soon prevailed, and today Benzion’s brilliant revisionist achievement towers over the field of Inquisition studies.[21]

His obituary in The New York Times stated: "Though praised for its insights, the book was also criticized as having ignored standard sources and interpretations. Not a few reviewers noted that it seemed to look at long-ago cases of anti-Semitism through the rear-view mirror of the Holocaust." Indeed, quite generally, Netanyahu regarded Jewish history as "a history of holocausts."[14] Origins led him into a scholarly dispute with Yitzhak Baer. Baer, following earlier views, considered the Anusim (forced converts to Christianity) a case of "Kiddush Hashem" (sanctification of the name [of God]: i.e., dying or risking oneself to preserve the name of God). According to Baer, therefore, the converts chose to live a double life, with some level of risk, while retaining their original faith.[citation needed] Netanyahu, in contrast, challenged the belief that the accusations of the Inquisition were true, and considered the majority of converts "Mitbolelim" (Cultural assimilationists) and willing converts to Christianity, claiming that the small number of forced converts who did not truly adhere to their new religion were used by the Inquisition as propaganda to allege a broader resistance movement.[citation needed] According to Netanyahu, Christian society had actually never accepted the new converts, for reasons of racial envy.[20]

Netanyahu was a member of the

Encyclopedia Judaica
” and “The World History of the Jewish People.”

Awarded Doctorate Honoris Causa by the University of Valladolid (Spain) in 2001.

Death

Netanyahu died on April 30, 2012, in his Jerusalem home, at the age of 102. He was survived by two of his sons, seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.[22]

In popular culture

Netanyahu and his family are portrayed in Joshua Cohen's novel The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family (New York Review Books, 2021), set in upstate New York in 1959–60. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2022.

Awards

  • 1995:
    National Jewish Book Award in the Sephardic Studies for The Origins of the Inquisition[23]

Published works

References

  1. ^ Staff (2000-02-01). "Cela Netanyahu, at 87". News. The Jerusalem Post. p. 2. Archived from the original on 2016-01-27. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
  2. ^
    Gale, 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC. Fee via Fairfax County Public Library
    , accessed 2009-05-18. Document Number: H1000072529.
  3. Weadar
    5706 (March 13, 1946); March 25, 1910, is 14 Weadar 5670.
  4. ^ Asa-El, Amotz (May 3, 2012). "Middle Israel: Benzion Netanyahu's on messianism". The Jerusalem Post.
  5. The Huffington Post
    . May 2, 2009.
  6. ^ Benzion Halevi Netanyahu, Geni
  7. ^ Greer Fay, Cashman (May 1, 2012). "'A symbol of fervent and uncompromising Zionism'". The Jerusalem Post.
  8. ^ "Benzion Netanyahu to be laid to rest in Jerusalem". The Jerusalem Post. April 30, 2012.
  9. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "The Iron Wall". Archived from the original on August 6, 2011.
  10. Jabotinsky was a steady contributor to these papers, and their editors included his secretary at the time, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, father of Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the leaders of today's Likud
    party.
  11. ^ Goldberg, Jeffrey (September 14, 1997). "From Peace Process To Police Process". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-05-18. As you know, the current Prime Minister's father was Jabotinsky's secretary, Kanan says, referring to Netanyahu's father, Benzion, a doctrinaire Revisionist.
  12. Los Angeles, California. p. 57. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on September 7, 2008. Retrieved 2009-05-18.
  13. ProQuest 107797981
    .
  14. ^ a b Martin, Douglas (April 30, 2012). "Benzion Netanyahu, Hawkish Scholar, Dies at 102". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  15. ^ Medof, Rafael (2002). Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1926–1948. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. pp. 94–5.
  16. ^ "Obituary: Benzion Netanyahu". The Herald. 10 May 2012. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  17. The Jewish Week. Archived from the original
    on 6 November 2018. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  18. ^ Murphy, Cullen (2012). God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 95.
  19. ^ Hasson, Nir; Verter, Yossi; Ravid, Barak (April 30, 2012). "Benzion Netanyahu, Father of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dies at 102". Haaretz.
  20. ^ a b "Алекс Тарн - о книге Б.Нетаниягу "Истоки инквизиции в Испании"". www.alekstarn.com (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2020-07-26. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
  21. Tablet Magazine
    , July 6, 2010.
  22. ^ "Netanyahu's Father Passes Away at Age 102". Arutz Sheva. 30 April 2012.
  23. ^ "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-25.

External links

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