Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv

Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv in 1949, the second of three sons of Tzila and historian Benzion Netanyahu. He grew up in Jerusalem and near Philadelphia, where his family moved in 1963 for his father's work. He finished high school in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania.

In 1967 he returned to Israel alone to join the IDF and served in Sayeret Matkal. He fought in the War of Attrition, became a team commander and was wounded during the Sabena hijacking rescue. He left active service in 1972 and came back to fight in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

He studied architecture at MIT and earned a master's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1976. He worked at the Boston Consulting Group in those years. His brother Yonatan was killed in the 1976 Entebbe raid.

Back in Israel, he headed the Jonathan Institute for Terror Studies. He served at the embassy in Washington from 1982 to 1984 and as ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988. He then entered the Knesset with Likud, became party chair in 1993 and was elected prime minister in 1996.

He served as finance minister from 2003 to 2005 and as prime minister again from 2009 to 2021 and from 2022. Indictments for bribery, fraud and breach of trust were filed against him in 2020, and his trial is ongoing. In 2024 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him.