Benjamin Netanyahu

Current prime minister of Israel. He previously held the same position from June 1996 to July 1999 and is currently the Chairman of the Likud Party. (The Likud charter does not recognize the right of Palestine to exist). Born in Tel-Aviv on October 21, 1949, Benjamin Netanyahu grew up in Jerusalem. He spent his high school years in the United States, where his father, the historian Professor Benzion Netanyahu, taught history. Returning to Israel in 1967, Mr. Netanyahu enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces and served in an elite commando unit. During the first Knesset debate on the Oslo peace accords (see September 13, 1993), Likud party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of US neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists, compares the accords to British attempts to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before World War II. Referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he shouts at Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, “You are worse than Chamberlain.” Netanyahu is so aggressive in part because he has the public and private support of influential US neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists. “I was ambassador [to the US] for four years of the peace process, and the Christian fundamentalists were vehemently opposed to the peace process,” Israeli ambassador Itamar Rabinovich will recall (see July 1993). “They believed that the land belonged to Israel as a matter of divine right. So they immediately became part of a campaign by the Israeli right to undermine the peace process.” Netanyahu’s outburst on the floor of the Knesset is a deliberate part of this strategy. [Knesset Homepage, 2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 136]