Benzion Netanyahu, who died Monday, was a renowned scholar who both wrote history and influenced it in a lifetime that spanned a century.
Netanyahu, 102, was a historian who authored several important works on the Spanish Inquisition, challenging the accepted views about that vital chapter of Jewish history.
His death was international news Monday, however, not because of who he was but because of who his son is. The influence wielded by the elder Netanyahu over his second son, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a matter of some speculation throughout the younger Netanyahu’s political career.
Benzion Netanyahu’s eldest son, Yoni, died leading Israeli commandos in the famed Entebbe rescue raid in 1976.
“I learned from you to look into the future,” Benjamin Netanyahu told his father at a party for his 100th birthday in 2010. His father, the prime minister said, had foreseen both the Holocaust and the attacks of September 11, 2001.
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