An expert in handling the media. Netanyahu
צילום: איי פי
Biography: Bibi Netanyahu is back
Following Monday night’s victory in Likud primaries, former prime minister Netanyahu seems set to resume leading public role as party’s candidate for prime ministerial post in March 28 general elections
Following Monday night’s victory in the Likud primaries, Benjamin Netanyahu seems set to resume a leading public role as the Likud candidate for the prime ministerial post in the March 28 general elections.
Netanyahu lead the Likud in the general elections twice in the past with opposed results: In 1996 he defeated Shimon Peres and three years later he lost to Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu’s political career started in 1984 as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. He was first elected to the Knesset in 1988.
Articulate in English, energetic and an expert in handling the media, Netanyahu became the head of a young bread of Likud leaders.
Born in 1949 Netanyahu became the first prime minister to be born after the establishment of the state when he defeated Shimon Peres in 1996.
U.S. links
Born to Ben-Tzion Netanyahu, a historian of Jewish history, Netanyahu’s connection with the United States started at the tender age of nine when his family left Israel to spend two years in America.
At age 14 Netanyahu returned with his family to the U.S. where they spent 4 years after which the young Netanyahu returned to Israel to be recruited to the Israel Defense Forces.
He served in an elite commando unit and successfully completed an officer’s course.
In 1972, after 5 years in the army, Netanyahu left Israel for the U.S., yet soon returned upon the eruption of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
When the war ended Netanyahu returned to the U.S. to complete his studies, taking courses at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under his American name Benjamin Nitai.
Although successful in giving financial advice to private companies, Netanyahu was inclined to embark on a political career.
The 1976 death of his brother Jonathan in a raid against terrorists who hijacked an airliner in airliner in Entebbe changed Netanyahu’s life.
In 1978 Netanyahu returned to Israel with his family and established the Jonathan Institute for Terrorism Research. In 1982 he divorced his first wife and cashed in on his friendship with Moshe Arens, then Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., to find an envoy’s post in Washington.
In 1984 he was appointed as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, a post he held until1988 when he returned to Israel to resume an active role in the Likud party and appeared as the 10th name on the party’s list for the 1988 general elections, winning a Likud seat in parliament.
Under the government of prime minister Yitzhak Shamir he served as deputy foreign minister and then as a minister-without-portfolio in the Prime Minister’s Office. During that time he built an image of a staunch advocate of Israel’s cause, articulating the Israeli government’s position during the first Gulf War and at the Madrid talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
