Of half-Polish and half-Belarusian origins, Netanyahu was born the year after the founding of the State of Israel but spent a considerable part of his youth in the United States. In 1963, together with the rest of the family, he followed his father, who was appointed professor of history and philosophy at the University of Denver and then of Jewish studies at Cornell University in New York. After completing his military service and an operational role in the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Egypt, he returned to the States where he earned a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But his relationship with the country of stars and stripes does not end with his university studies. In 1982 Netanyahu was appointed number two in Israeli diplomacy in Washington, also becoming a well-known face in the American media in which he strenuously defended his country, in excellent English. Also thanks to his mastery of the language and the relationships established on American soil, in 1984 he became Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, a position he held until 1988.
At home, Netanyahu's popularity is linked above all to his family history. In 1976 his older brother, Jonathan, was killed in a hostage rescue operation at Entebbe airport, Uganda. The circumstances of his death struck a chord with Israeli public opinion and the figure became legendary. Benjamin promotes memory by founding an anti-terrorism center dedicated to his missing brother.
At the end of the 1980s, Netanyahu joined the Likud of which he is still the leader. After having held the position of leader of the opposition, in 1996 he won the elections by a narrow margin with the slogan "A secure peace". From the first government mandate, concluded in 1999, he moved the bar further and further to the right, allying himself with the most influential religious parties in the country, from Shas to Otzma Yehudit.
Since the mid-1990s, the Likud has remained one of the main protagonists of Israeli and Middle Eastern politics, emerging victorious at the polls several times and maintaining a central role in the Israeli power system. Netanyahu returned to the helm of the government in 2009 and remained there almost continuously, surpassing one of the founders of the Jewish state, David Ben Gurion, in terms of longevity.
Close to exiting the scene several times, Donald Trump's election as president of the United States in 2016 gave Benjamin Netanyahu a precious ally. Since his first term, the tycoon has offered support to Israel and its leader, with words and deeds. According to The Guardian newspaper, the list of concessions made in ten years is long, from the reduction of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians to the acceptance of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, up to the American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Among the successes that Netanyahu has achieved, with the decisive contribution of Washington, there is also the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are the first Persian Gulf countries to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, followed by Morocco, Sudan and Kazakhstan.
After the parenthesis of the "government of change" led by the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid tandem, at the beginning of 2023 Netanyahu returns to the helm of the executive supported by the right-wing bloc. The following October 7, the terrorist attack launched by Hamas with the killing of over 1,200 Israelis gave rise to a bloody war in the Gaza Strip. In three years of fighting, the invasion and massacre of the civilian population caused over 80 thousand deaths and, despite the ceasefire signed in October 2025, the conflict damaged Netanyahu's image at home but above all abroad. In November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued an official arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
During his long mandate Bibi also managed to politically survive the indictment for corruption, fraud and abuse of office in three cases and the start of the trial, which was suspended several times. Among the latest scandals in chronological order are some revelations - always denied by his office - that he had been warned in advance of the imminent terrorist attack by Hamas.
In February 2026, Netanyahu and Trump launched a surprise attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the "historic" enemy of the Jewish State, which led to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many leaders of the regime. Israel supports the US in all phases of the conflict, which is still ongoing, which led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and which could see a new resurgence.
Political elections will then be held in October 2026, the first since the outbreak of the war that has been inflaming the Middle East for three years now. The bloc led by Netanyahu himself, despite what happened and against what the previous polls predicted, manages to establish itself as the first coalition with 53 seats: however, it does not have a majority in the Knesset, Israel's single-chamber parliament made up of 120 members. Eisenkot's Change bloc instead stopped at 48 seats, with the Arab parties obtaining 19.
