BICOM

Benzion Netanyahu, father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, died early Monday morning at the age of 102. His funeral will take place at 5 pm local time at Har Hamenuhot in Jerusalem.

Benzion Netanyahu was an Israeli historian and professor emeritus at Cornell University. He served as a secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who is considered the father of Revisionist Zionism, and was a Revisionist leader in the Zionist Movement in the United States. During the 1950s he also served as editor for the Encyclopaedia Hebraica.

Netanyahu was born in Warsaw on 25 March 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 Jerusalem. As an academic, he specialised in the field of Medieval Spanish Jewry, writing a book about Isaac Abrabanel and essays on the Spanish Inquisition and the Marranos.

Benzion was father to three sons: Yonatan Netanyahu, a commander of IDF elite unit Sayeret Matkal who was the sole Israeli casualty during the successful operation to free hundreds of hostages in Entebbe, Uganda who were taken aboard a hijacked airplane, Iddo Netanyahu, a radiologist and writer, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel.

The death of the prime minister’s father has already altered the political agenda for this week. Labour, which intended to submit a proposal for early elections, has announced it will postpone its submission by a week.