Netanyahu’s father mourned
Many believe Benjamin Netanyahu’s preoccupation with perceived threats to Israel’s existence, such as Iran, is a direct application of his father’s reading of history. But despite the common threads in the two men’s thinking, the father reportedly came to see his son’s outlook as too soft. “With Benzion there was no place for compromise, and for that reason he sometimes showed displeasure with needs that his son had as a politician,” said Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin.
COMMUNAL leaders have paid tribute to the father and many say political mentor of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who died on Monday, aged 102.
Benzion Netanyahu was a prominent figure in Revisionist Zionism, the right-wing movement which spawned the Likud party that his son now leads. Before World War II, he was personal secretary to the movement’s leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and was a keen spokesman for its ideals until shortly before his death.
“You were smart. You saw what was coming,” Benjamin Netanyahu said at the funeral, speaking of his father’s conviction that a Jewish state would be established. He said that Benzion “showed us what it means to be committed to the nation and state”.
But it was not only the father’s activism that shaped the son’s political outlook – it was also his intellectual endeavours. He was a renowned historian, whose work contained a strong message that Jewish history, with its string of massacres, repeats itself.
He was best known for his theory regarding the Spanish Inquisition: that even those Jews who genuinely converted to Christianity were persecuted because they were born Jewish. Benzion was understood to be arguing that the Inquisition was an early version of the Holocaust.
Many believe Benjamin Netanyahu’s preoccupation with perceived threats to Israel’s existence, such as Iran, is a direct application of his father’s reading of history. But despite the common threads in the two men’s thinking, the father reportedly came to see his son’s outlook as too soft. “With Benzion there was no place for compromise, and for that reason he sometimes showed displeasure with needs that his son had as a politician,” said Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin.
A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Canberra said, “Benzion Netanyahu was one of Israel’s greatest historians. His research provided some of the greatest contributions to the knowledge and understanding of anti-Semitism. He will be greatly missed by the history community, by the people of Israel, and particularly by his family.”
The sentiment was echoed by president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Philip Chester. “Israel, and the Zionist world, will miss a mind so active as Benzion Netanyahu, a model of scholarship and learning until the day he died,” said Chester.
Describing Benzion as a “wonderful patriot”, Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Dr Danny Lamm, hailed him as “a principled individual who saw Israel’s position in the world with a rare clarity .”
AJN STAFF
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