Netanyahu, Benzion

Benzion Netanyahu was born on March 25, 1910 in Warsaw. Initially, he bore the name Mileikovsky. In 1920, he and his family moved to Palestine (then under British control). In 1944, he married Tsile Segal (died in 2000).

In total, Netanyahu's family had three sons: Yonatan was born in 1946, Binyamin in 1949, Ido (in 1952, radiologist, writer and playwright).

After moving to Jerusalem, Benzion Netanyahu entered the Hebrew University . There, he devoted himself to the problem of Marrans - Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal, who replaced Judaism with Christianity, and also promoted and spread the atheistic articles of Max Nordau .

He proposed the theory that Marrans were not baptized under duress, but with the goal of integrating into local communities. He also claimed that the indigenous population oppressed baptized Jews not for religious reasons, but because of racist convictions. This point of view is described in detail in the monograph "The Origins of the Inquisition in Spain of the XV Century" ^[2] .

Later, Benzion Netanyahu moved to the United States, where he became an honorary professor at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York). Subsequently returned to Israel. He was the second chief editor of the Hebrew Jewish Encyclopedia after the death of Joseph Klausner ^[3] .

Netanyahu Sr. is known for having worked as personal secretary to Vladimir (Zeev) Zhabotinsky , the founder of the Zionist revisionist movement, whose members in the 1920s supported the creation of a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River. At the same time, Benzion never linked his life with politics. However, he criticized the political views of his son Benjamin.

Brother - Israeli mathematician Elisha Netanyahu (1912–1986), husband of Shoshana Netanyahu , a judge of the Israeli Supreme Court (born Schönburg, born 1923), father of computer science professor Nathan Netanyahu (born 1951).