'Angel of destruction': What made Benjamin Netanyahu?
.webp?itok=oJDu6_9e 1x" type="image/webp" width="1400" height="1046"> - Alex MacDonald
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held office longer than anyone else since the founding of the state in 1948. The first leader to be born in the country, his character and beliefs have informed his outlook, and by extension shaped Israel, for more than three decades.
There has been no more consequential nor inflammatory politician who has embodied the intransigence of many Israelis towards the idea of Palestinian sovereignty; nor been so unapologetically nationalist.
The examples are manifold. There was the occasion, only months before the November 1995 assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli activist opposed to the Oslo Accords, when Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession amid chants of "Death to Rabin". Later Rabin’s widow described Netanyahu as a “monstrosity” and a “nightmare”.
Between 2009 and 2014, Netanyahu acquiesced to talks with the Palestinian Authority, only to kill the negotiations by demanding discussions about full Israeli sovereignty of Jerusalem and the demilitarisation of any Palestinian state.
He has also faced ongoing charges of corruption, which he has denied, and attempted to reform the judiciary. Such moves have destroyed his popularity among natural allies and generated perpetual outrage among enemies.
Childhood friend Uzi Beller, who spoke at protests, said in the 2024 documentary The Bibi Files: “He lies left and right. Bibi lies left and right. A lie for him is n0t something bad. Seriously. And he doesn’t feel any problem with that.” Former prime minister (and Likud leader) Yitzhak Shamir once called Netanyahu the “angel of destruction”.
But perhaps worst of all for Israelis was Netanyahu's failure to prevent the 7 October 2023 attack, led by Hamas from Gaza, which left more than 1,100 Israelis dead. Netanyahu declared war that same day: 15 months on, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed amid Israeli attacks.
Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a protest in Jerusalem in 1995 against Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords (screengrab)
") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">Israel has also invaded, bombed and carried out assassinations in Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic presidents, told Middle East Eye that regardless of anyone's view of Netanyahu, he was arguably Israel’s most effective politician of all time.
"He's the most skillful, the most manipulative, and the most determined, which is why he's been able to manoeuvre and maintain himself as a relevant and credible force in Israeli politics," said Miller.
So what influences shaped Netanyahu’s worldview, not least before he entered politics, and made him what he is now?
Benzion Netanyahu: Honour your father
Israeli leaders before Netanyahu came from Europe, where they and their families were subject to antisemitism. For example, Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth prime minister, lost both parents during the Holocaust.
Such experiences shaped Zionism, which had emerged in the late 19th century, and saw it develop into two main strands that have dominated Israeli politics since the country's founding in 1948.
Labor Zionism advocated the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine along broadly socialist lines. Its supporters included Israel’s founder and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion.
Benzion Netanyahu (left) and his son Benjamin attend the official memorial service of Zeev Jabutinski at Mount Hertzel, Jerusalem, in July 2010 (Israeli govt/AFP)
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") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">Revisionist Zionism, adhered to by the likes of Begin, saw the Jewish state's priority in Palestine as expanding to the widest "historical" borders, including as envisioned by its ideological figurehead Ze'ev Jabotinsky, both sides of the Jordan River.
"The only way to reach an agreement [with the Arabs] is an iron wall - meaning a force in Eretz Yisrael which will not be shattered by any Arab influence," said Jabotinsky, who also founded and led the Zionist armed group Irgun until his death in 1940.
It was this second brand of Zionism into which Benjamin Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv on 21 October 1949, three years after his family returned from living in the US. His mother Tzila Segal grew up in Ottoman-ruled Palestine, while his father Benzion Netanyahu was born in Warsaw. Though the family was secular, biblical history played a formative part in its development and ideology.
Benzion, a historian, had been Jabotinsky's personal secretary. Like his mentor, he believed Ben-Gurion was too conciliatory to both the British Mandate and the region's Arabs, both of who would have to be defeated by force to enable the creation of Israel.
New Yorker journalist David Remnick wrote in 1998 that wherever he went in Jerusalem he was told: “To understand Bibi, you have to understand the father.”
Benzion’s attitude towards the Arab population of Palestine was uncompromising throughout his life. In 2009, three years before his death at the age of 102, he told an interviewer at Israeli outlet Maariv: “[The] vast majority of Israeli Arabs would choose to exterminate us if they had the option to do so.
“The Bible finds no worse image than that of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency toward conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence.”
Former Israeli negotiator and analyst Daniel Levy told Middle East Eye it was important not to underestimate this ideological component of Netanyahu's worldview, which was impressed on him at a young age; or dismiss him as an opportunist only interested in personal advancement.
"If the political winds would have blown in a different direction for the betterment of his career, he would still not be Netanyahu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner," Levy said.
Greater Israel: Expand the homeland
Benzion was dedicated to the Israeli cause. But for his children, it was one they initially experienced from a distance.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his siblings, including his brother Yonatan or Yoni, would spend much of their childhood in Pennsylvania, where their father taught at a Jewish college, from 1956 to 1958, and again from 1963 to 1967.
Although Netanyahu would recall speaking only Hebrew when he first nervously arrived at school in New York aged eight, a childhood friend would later describe him as “completely Americano” and, despite spending every summer in Israel, someone who saw his future in the US.
Benjamin Netanyahu pictured as teenager in the US during the mid 1960s (AFP)
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") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">Benzion's influence would instill in his son a “disdain for liberal-leaning, Democrat-voting American Jews”; by 14, he would lecture his left-leaning friends in Israel about the “evils of socialism". He would carry these bugbears throughout his career.
A childhood accident would leave Netanyahu with a permanent scar that he tried to cover by hiding his lips, giving rise to what his opponents would see as a perpetual trademark smirk.
As Netanyahu grew up, so did his bond with Yoni. Beller told The Bibi Files: “Yoni was like the star of the family. The mother and the father didn’t ignore it. They were very much into admiration of strength and power.”
In 1967, Netanyahu returned home to fight in the war between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, notably Egypt, Syria and Jordan. He would remain in military service until 1972.
The conflict, which Netanyahu would brand one of the “greatest victories in the history of Israel”, was a turning point not just for him but also his country. Until then, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza - areas viewed by Revisionists as part of Greater Israel - had been under the control of Jordan and Egypt respectively. But Israel seized and occupied them in 1967, along with the Sinai: war could bring expansion and opportunity, not least for the Revisionist Zionists.
After the war, the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and East Jerusalem accelerated - despite being illegal under international law. It became, and still is, a leading right-wing cause in Israel, whose advocates see the lands as part of the Greater Israel promised by biblical texts.
“In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers,” Netanyahu would tell the US Congress in 2011, using the Israeli nationalist term for the West Bank.
“We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace.”
Nor was this Netanyahu’s only conflict. He returned to the US in 1972 but was back in Israel in 1973 to fight in the October War (called the Yom Kippur War in Israel) against Egyptian and Syrian attempts to recapture the Sinai and Golan respectively.
Netanyahu served in the elite, and at the time classified, Sayeret Matka unit, alongside his brothers Yonatan and Iddo, as well as Dalia Rabin, the daughter of his later nemesis Rabin.
The Sayeret Matka was responsible for numerous operations, such as retaking a Sabena airliner from hijackers at Tel Aviv Airport in 1972. It also carried out assassinations, including against members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Black September splinter group, held responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes and others at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
"How strong the nation is and how great it is in moments of crisis," Netanyahu would later write of the war, quoting his brother Yoni.
Yoni Netanyahu: Band of brothers
In late June 1976, an Air France flight between Tel Aviv and Paris was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations, which demanded the release of Palestinian fighters held in Israel and elsewhere. The plane diverted to Uganda, where the hijackers were supported by dictator Idi Amin and backed by his troops. The assault on Entebbe Airport to successfully free the hostages was led by Yoni Netanyahu, the only Israeli operative killed during the operation.
After his death, Yoni was honoured across Israel and attained near-mythical status. Netanyahu biographer Anshel Pfeffer said he remains arguably Israel’s most valourised war hero.
Speaking at Yoni's eulogy, then Defence Minister Shimon Peres - later to become one of Benjamin’s many enemies - said that "a bullet had torn the young heart of one of Israel's finest sons, one of its most courageous warriors, one of its most promising commanders - the magnificent Yonatan Netanyahu".
Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a banner of his brother Yonatan – or “Yoni” – at a school in the Jewish settlement of Elkana in the West Bank in 2019 (AFP)
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") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">Netanyahu said in 2016 that Yonatan's death changed everything for him, even going so far as saying it "marked the birth of his political life". Living in the US at the time of his brother's death, he wrote of driving seven hours to Ithaca in New York to tell his parents the news as "a Via Dolorosa of unspeakable pain".
“Though Yoni had died in the war on terror, he never thought this battle was merely a military conflict,” Netanyahu wrote. “He saw it also as a political and moral struggle between civilisation and barbarism. I now devoted myself to this battle.”
Pfeffer has noted how the Netanyahu family would prosecute their fallen son’s legacy over subsequent years to almost obsessive levels, including arguing for decades with other members of the Sayeret Matka about Yoni's role in the Entebbe Operation and elevating his role at the expense of all others.
Moshe Arens, Benjamin Netanyahu’s political ally and mentor, would later say the family had been gripped by a “madness” in their pursuit of the legacy, attempting to discredit operation leader and planner Dan Shomron by accusing him of “trying to steal Yoni’s glory”.
Pfeffer said that no matter how much Yoni's legacy was lauded, it would never be enough for Benjamin in particular.
“For him, the nation’s history, and his family’s and his personal history, are all one.”
Ben Nitay: US free marketeer
Over the next few years, Netanyahu would reinvent himself as an expert on terrorism and the threat of violence from Arab militant groups, rather than national warfare, founding the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute in Israel.
But he would also pursue academic interests, and studied at MIT in Boston. Professor Emeritus Leon B Groisser of MIT’s Department of Architecture would later recall first meeting the then 23-year-old in his office, prior to becoming his faculty adviser.
"He made it clear that he didn't have four years to get an undergraduate degree," Groisser told MIT News in 1996. "He didn't say it with bravado - he said it as fact. He proceeded to overload and he did very well." Netanyahu completed his bachelor's degree in architecture in two-and-a-half years, despite taking time out to fight in the 1973 war.
While living in the US, Netanyahu changed his name to “Benjamin Nitay”, an apparent reference to Mount Nitai in Israel. It also echoed a pseudonym used by his father when writing articles.
Although Netanyahu said renaming himself was just to make it easier for Americans to pronounce his Hebrew name, Israeli political rivals would later say it showed he intended to stay in the US long term rather than return home. At the 1996 election, it also boosted the perception that Netanyahu had a murky past.
Benjamin Netanyahu, right, meets with a senior officer while on military service in Israel in 1976 (AFP)
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") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">During the summer of 1976, just weeks before his brother’s death, Netanyahu began working as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), shifting between the US and Israel. Here he developed his staunchly free-market views and became a fierce opponent of the state-led social democracy backed by the Labor Party in Israel.
Decades later, after he came to power, Netanyahu would oversee widespread privitisation within the Israeli economy. He also derided the leadership of the powerful Histadrut trade union as "Bolshevik dinosaurs", removed foreign currency regulations, and promoted Israel to foreign investors.
At BCG he befriended Mitt Romney, later the 2016 Republican presidential candidate. In 2012, Romney recalled his then-colleague relating to him a memory from his basic training, about a soldier trying to race his fellow soldiers with an overweight man perched on his shoulders. Inevitably, the soldier with the man on his shoulders loses.
“Government,” Netanyahu told Romney, “is the guy on your shoulders.”
Netanyahu also praised British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, another advocate of small government, as a “staunch friend of Israel and the Jewish people”.
In the US, Netanyahu still fiercely advocated for Israel. And he did this via the media, the manipulation of which he understood would be crucial if he wanted power.
In 1978, “Ben Nitai” (as Netanyahu then was) appeared on The Advocate, a TV debate show based in Boston. There, he argued that the crux of tension in the Middle East was a refusal by Arab states to accept Israel, rather than the Palestinians’ lack of self-determination.
"I think the US should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state for several reasons," he told the audience, "the first being that it is unjust to demand the creation of a 22nd Arab state and a second Palestinian state at the expense of the only Jewish state.
“I believe we should fight for our survival. If I have to, I will fight again, but I hope not to.”
Ambassador Netanyahu: Power broker
By 1980, Netanyahu found himself back in Israel and politically adrift, working in publicity for a furniture company called Rim Industries.
Two years later, his life changed.
Likud politician Moshe Arens, a family friend, was two decades older than Netanyahu, but like him had also lived in the US and was a fellow graduate of MIT. He needed a deputy, having just been appointed as Israel’s ambassador in Washington. In 1982, Netanyahu accepted.
Israel was under heavy criticism internationally. That summer, it invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO, killing thousands of civilians. The most notorious massacres were in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila camps, where an estimated 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese men, women, and children were massacred by Christian militia backed by the Israeli army, which observed from outside as the atrocities unfolded.
In his new role in the US, Netanyahu worked the media rounds and was soon a regular face on news shows. “I covered a lot of ambassadors in Washington, and he was one of the best,” TV host Wolf Blitzer told Vanity Fair in 1996. CNN's Larry King said: “On a scale of one to 10 as a great guest, he is an eight. If he had a sense of humour, he’d be a 10.”
In 1984, Netanyahu’s success saw him appointed as Israeli ambassador to the UN at the age of 35. “Netanyahu is considered a rising star in the Herut firmament,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time, “with a future in politics if he chooses to go into political life.”
Benjamin Netanyahu speaks against Lebanon and Syria at the UN Security Council, New York, in September 1986 (AFP)
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") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">During one heated exchange at the UN General Assembly in November 1984, Jordanian Ambassador Khalid Madadha compared Israel’s military rule in the West Bank to that of the Nazis. Netanyahu declared himself a spokesman for the six million Jews killed in Holocaust. “Lie, but know when to stop,” he told the ambassador.
It would not be the last time Netanyahu would use the assembly as a forum for his outrage at criticism of Israel.
During his time as ambassador, Netanyahu would also forge a friendship with Fred Trump, an 80-year-old New York businessman, whose son Donald would become a key ally when he and Netanyahu were leaders of their respective countries on two separate occasions.
In December 1984, at the age of 35, Netanyahu gave an interview, during which he noted he was both one of the youngest representatives at the UN and also the first Israeli-born delegate to represent his country.
Should Israel consider leaving the UN, he was asked, if so much of it consisted of anti-Israel nations? “As long as the democratic nations, and the US foremost amongst them, decide to stay in the UN, it is important and vital for Israel’s national interests to be part of this forum,” he said.
While noting Israel’s position at the body was still “bad”, Netanyahu boasted of having pushed back against the “Soviet-Arab bloc” in the UN, and defeated attempts by Iran to deny Israel’s credentials.
He also repeated his thoughts about the existential threat that “terrorism” posed to Israel and the wider world.
“The most effective way is to understand that it is a form of warfare and treat it accordingly," he said. "It is a war in which the terrorist is out to destroy democratic society. He is not interested in concessions but in capitulation. Therefore the first rule of fighting terrorism is not to surrender.”
What about his political ambitions? Four years later, in an interview with Moment magazine, Netanyahu said he had previously turned down the prestigious role of leading the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, both based in Israel.
But that did not mean he did not want to go home.
“I’ve spent the last five years outside the country. I’d like to go back and spend all my time in Israel itself.”
Benjamin Netanyahu: Israeli politician
In 1988, Netanyahu returned to Israel, joined the right-wing Likud party, and was elected to the Knesset. Like many right-wing lawmakers, he had served in the Israeli army and held strong Zionist beliefs about the nation’s destiny.
But what differentiated him was his view that the primary foe - even the primary problem facing the world - was not so much regional governments and states as “terrorism” of the kind that had killed his brother and which was gaining too much sympathy on the world stage.
Israel was still under widespread censure internationally, including from members of the Jewish diaspora and left-wing Israelis, for its occupation of Lebanon and its complicity in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres.
In 1991, Yitzhak Shamir, prime minister and Likud leader, was pressured by the Republican White House of President George Bush to negotiate with the PLO at the Madrid Conference, which led to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995.
Shamir, and his desire for a Greater Israel, was also out of step with the rest of Israel and the world. In 1993, Likud lost power, Shamir lost the leadership - and Netanyahu became leader of the party.
Likud opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset in Jerusalem in September 1993 (AFP)
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") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">From the start, Netanyahu took a hard line against peace talks, a two-state solution, and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. "Instead of giving peace a chance, it is a guarantee of increased tension, future terrorism and, ultimately, war," he wrote in 1993 in the New York Times.
During the decade, Israel became more divided over its future, not least after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the assassination of its prime minister, and Labor’s surprise defeat at the 1996 election on a pro-talks platform.
That schism has widened during the past three decades, as popular sentiment in Israel has shifted even more to the right and the Revisionist Zionism of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Benzion Netanyahu.
At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu has increased his power, becoming the defining and dominant political figure.
Before Netanyahu first assumed power in 1996, there had been seven Labor leaders of Israel during the previous five decades. In the three decades since there has been only one, Ehud Barak, and even then only for 20 months.
For the past 15 months, Netanyahu has overseen repeated military assaults on Gaza. Illegal Jewish settlements are more widespread than ever. Palestinian freedoms and human rights are repeatedly crushed. The prospect of Palestinian statehood is still more remote. Netanyahu’s every policy and statement has been opposed to any form of compromise on the part of Israel.
And then there are the charges of corruption, as well as accusations that he weakened the judiciary to save himself from jail.
Despite widespread and huge protests, Netanyahu never backed down. During the war on Gaza, he spurred further outrage among many at home when he chose the onslaught against Palestinians over talks to free Israeli hostages.
A mass protest in Tel Aviv against Benjamin Netanyahu on 23 September 2023 (AFP)
") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">Predictions of Netanyahu’s final days, be they as politician or citizen at liberty, have been made repeatedly, and always proved premature. A change of administration in Washington, with Donald Trump as Republican president, has proved more sympathetic to Netanyahu than his Democrat predecessor Joe Biden.
When the end comes, how will Netanyahu be remembered?
"Longest governing prime minister in the history of the State of Israel," says Miller. "And without hesitation or reservation, the worst one."
