Benzion Netanyahu’s Formative Years

Decades before he was known as a historian or as an early neoconservative thinker, let alone as the father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Benzion Netanyahu was a young student and journalist in British Mandatory Palestine. In this tumultuous period, reaching its peak with the 1933 murder of Haim Arlosoroff, Netanyahu dwelt at the margins of Zionist politics, belonging to a group of well-educated, right-wing, young outsiders—students, poets, journalists, intellectuals, and pseudo-intellectuals—all of whom rebelled against their current and former Hebrew University professors. This study examines the crystallization of Netanyahu’s worldview and his Zionist ideology by focusing on three events between 1932 and 1935 that shaped his hostility toward the left and, much later, which became integral components of politics in Israel.