Binyamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He also currently serves as a member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Likud party.
Born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents,[1][2] Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the establishment of the state.
Soldier
Binyamin Netanyahu joined the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967 and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit. He took part in many missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), Operation Gift (1968) and Operation Isotope (1972), during which he was shot in the shoulder. He fought on the front lines in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory.[3][4] He achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
Graduate
After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was recruited as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. He returned to Israel in 1978 to found the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, named after his brother Yonatan, who died leading Operation Entebbe.
Diplomat
Binyamin Netanyahu served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988.
Politician
Netanyahu became the leader of the Likud party in 1993 and won the 1996 elections, becoming Israel's youngest ever Prime Minister, serving his first term from June 1996 to July 1999. He moved from the political arena to the private sector after being defeated in the 1999 election for prime minister by Ehud Barak. Netanyahu returned to politics in 2002 as Foreign Affairs Minister (2002–03) and Finance Minister (2003–05) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed the government over disagreements regarding the Gaza disengagement plan. As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a major reform of the Israeli economy, which was credited by commentators as having significantly improved Israel's subsequent economic performance.[5] He retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, Kadima. In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud. Following the 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority,[6] Netanyahu formed a coalition government.[7][8] After the victory in the 2013 elections, he became the second person to be elected to the position of Prime Minister for a third term, after Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion. In March 2015, Netanyahu was elected to his fourth term as prime minister.[9][10][11]
References
<references>
- ↑ The Enduring Influence of Benjamin Netanyahu's Father Judy Dempsey, 3 May 2012, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- ↑ David Remnick (23 January 2013). "Bibi's Blues". The New Yorker.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Amir Buhbut, "Sayeret Matkal is 50 years old"
- ↑ Saving Sergeant Netanyahu By Mitch Ginsburg, 25 October 2012, Times of Israel
- ↑ Likud Leaders, by Thomas G. Mitchell, (McFarland 2015), Chapter 10
- ↑
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{{URL|example.com|optional display text}} - ↑ “Is This Ship Sinking?” Inside the Collapse of the Campaign Against Netanyahu 20 March 2015, New Yorker
- ↑ "Can Binyamin Netanyahu win again?" 14 March 2015 | Jerusalem, The Economist
- ↑ "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wins Re-Election, Becomes Israel's Longest-Serving Prime Minister"
