Benzion Netanyahu

Benzion Netanyahu was born in 1910 in Warsaw

Benzion Mileikowsky was born in Warsaw in 1910 to Sarah and Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky, a Zionist activist. The family moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1920 and settled in Jerusalem. He later took the surname Netanyahu, a name his father had used to sign articles.

He studied at a teachers' seminary and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on medieval history. He later earned a PhD at Dropsie College in Philadelphia with a dissertation on Isaac Abarbanel.

As a student he joined the Revisionist Zionist movement and edited the newspaper Ha-Yarden until the British authorities closed it. In 1940 he went to New York, and he led the New Zionist Organization in the United States until 1948, lobbying for a Jewish state. In 1944 he married Tzila Segal, and they had three sons, Yonatan, Benjamin and Iddo.

He returned to Israel in 1949 and became an editor, later chief editor, of the Hebrew Encyclopedia. He then taught at Dropsie College, the University of Denver and Cornell University. His research on the Marranos and the Spanish Inquisition argued that converts were persecuted on racial grounds, which led to a dispute with Yitzhak Baer.

After his son Yonatan was killed in Operation Entebbe in 1976, he returned to Israel with his family. He died in 2012.