Benjamin Netanyahu - Family and Personal Life

Family and Personal Life

Related to the Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon) on his paternal side, Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv, to Benzion Netanyahu (original name Mileikowsky) and Cela (Tsilah; née Segal). His mother was born in 1912 in Petah Tikva, part of the future British Mandate of Palestine that eventually became Israel. Though all his grandparents were born in the Russian Empire (now Belarus, Lithuania and Poland), his mother's parents emigrated to Minneapolis in the United States.

Netanyahu's father, Benzion, was a professor of Jewish history at Cornell University, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, and a senior aide to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who remained active in research and writing into his nineties. Regarding the Palestinian people, he stated: "That they won't be able to face the war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won't be able to exist, and they will run away from here. But it all depends on the war, and whether we will win the battles with them." Netanyahu has dismissed those who note similarities between his relentlessly hawkish views and those of his late father as "psychobabble". For example, David Remnick has written: "To understand Bibi, you have to understand the father."

Netanyahu's paternal grandfather was Rabbi Natan Mileikowsky, a leading Religious Zionist rabbi and JNF fundraiser. Netanyahu's older brother, Yonatan, was killed in Uganda during Operation Entebbe in 1976. His younger brother, Iddo, is a radiologist and writer. All three brothers served in the Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit of the Israel Defense Forces.

Netanyahu's first marriage was to Miriam Weizmann, whom he met in Boston. The couple had one daughter, Noa (born 29 April 1978). The marriage ended in 1978. In 1981, he married Fleur Cates, a British citizen whom he met while they were both living in Boston, but the couple divorced in 1984. In 1991 Netanyahu married his third wife, Sara Ben-Artzi, a psychology major working as a flight attendant, whom he met while traveling on an El Al flight from New York to Israel. He and Sara have two sons, Yair (born 26 July 1991) and Avner (born 10 October 1994). Yair is a Corporal in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Avner is a national Bible champion and winner of the prestigious National Bible Quiz for Youth in Kiryat Shmona. Sara has been the defendant of numerous lawsuits filed by former housekeepers, alleging abuse and underpayment.

In the first half of 2008, doctors removed a small colon polyp that proved to be benign.

Netanyahu became a grandfather on 1 October 2009, when his daughter Noa Netanyahu-Roth (married to Daniel Roth) gave birth to a boy, Shmuel. In 2011, Noa and her husband Daniel had a second son named David.