Benzion Netanyahu
Benzion Netanyahu is a Professor of Jewish history. Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, he served as Secretary to the Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky. He is the father of Yonatan Netanyahu, an Israeli special forces commander killed in the Entebbe Raid in 1976, and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[1]
According to historian Dr Rafael Medoff, Netanyahu played a key role in ensuring bipartisan support for Zionism in the US at the 1944 Republican convention:
- At a time when most mainstream Jewish leaders backed Roosevelt and ignored the Republicans, Netanyahu cultivated ties to Hoover, Luce, Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio and other senior GOP figures. He urged them to include a pro-Zionist plank in their 1944 platform. So did Cleveland rabbi and Zionist leader Abba Hillel Silver, who was close to Taft.[2]
Haaretz reports:
- Medoff recounts the elder Netanyahu’s enlistment of Claire Booth Luce - the renowned essayist, feminist and born-again Republican conservative who delivered rousing speeches in both the 1944 and 1948 Republican conventions - as well as other Republicans to the Zionist-Revisionist cause. It was Netanyahu, Medoff says, who helped persuade Luce to help introduce a chapter in the party platform adopted at the 1944 Republican Convention in Chicago that slammed President Roosevelt’s failure to press for implementation of the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the British Mandate “while he pretends to support them”, as it said.[3]
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Notes
- ↑ Nicholas Goldberg, Is this a new Benjamin Netanyahu, 5 April 2009.
- ↑ Rafael Medoff, The Jewish vote as a factor in U.S. politics, Los Angeles Times, 23 August 2012.
- ↑ Chemi Shalev, The Netanyahus’ reliance on Republicans and Mormons goes back a very long way, Haaretz, 30 August 2012.
