Israel: Bibi Netanyahu Bio

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Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu:
Commando Turned
Prime Minister
 In more than 13 years as prime minister (PM) [elected four times] Benjamin Netanyahu is the youngest prime minister [PM], born after the nations declared Israel as a state [again] and Israel's longest-serving leader. He is lauded by his supporters as ‘King Bibi’ and the leader of Israel's right-wing Likud party.
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12-21-19, The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has broken many records ... following is a short bio:
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1. 1949 - born in Tel Aviv
2. 1967-73 - serves as soldier commando captain
3. 1984 - becomes ambassador to UN
4. 1988 - enters Knesset and government
5. 1996 - becomes prime minister
6. 1999 - loses re-election
7. 2002-03 - serves as foreign minister
8. 2003-05 - serves as finance minister; resigns 8/05 over Israel military forcibly removing Jews from Gaza
9. Dec 2005 - wins back leadership of Likud party
10. 2009 - returns as prime minister
11. 2013 - re-elected as prime minister
12. 2015 - wins fourth term as prime minister
13. 2019 – fifth election too close with Benny Gantz causing 3 elections in one year
14. 2019 - faces corruption charges in three cases

 
11-22-19, Benjamin Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv in 1949. In 1963 his family moved to the US when his father Benzion Netanyahu, a prominent historian and Zionist activist, was offered an academic post. At the age of 18, Benjamin returned to Israel, where he spent five distinguished years in the army where he was wounded on duty, serving as a captain in an elite commando unit, the Sayeret Matkal. He took part in a raid on Beirut's airport in 1968 and fought in the 1973 Middle East war. After his military service, PM Netanyahu went to university in the US earning a bachelor's and master's degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Mr. Netanyahu setup an anti-terrorism institute in his brother, Jonathan Netanyahu's memory [killed in 1976 rescue in Entebbe, Uganda] in 1982 became Israel's deputy chief of mission in Washington. And in 1984 Benjamin Netanyahu was appointed Israel's permanent representative at the UN.

In 1988 he returned to Israel working in domestic politics, winning a seat for the Likud party in the Knesset (parliament) and becoming deputy foreign minister. He later became party chairman and in 1996, following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, he became Israel's first directly elected prime minister.

​Despite having fiercely criticized the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Arabs/Muslims aka "Palestinians," Mr Netanyahu signed a deal handing over 80% of Hebron [land for peace against God’s will see Joel 3:2]  to Muslims control and agreed to further withdrawals from Judea & Samaria aka West Bank.

He lost the office of PM in 1999 to Labour leader Ehud Barak, PM Netanyahu's former commander. Succeeded as Likud leader by Ariel Sharon. After Mr Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001 and in 2005 forcibly removed 9,000 Jews from Gaza, Mr Netanyahu had returned to government in 2003, first as foreign minister and then as finance minister; but he resigned in 2005 protesting the GAZA withdrawal [Joel 3:2]. PM Sharon suffered a massive stroke soon after the Gaza withdrawal and Benjamin won back leadership of Likud.

In March 2009 Benjamin won back the Prime Ministership. He agreed to an unprecedented 10-month freeze on Jewish homes aka "settlement" construction in the West Bank, enabling peace talks with Palestinians, but negotiations collapsed in late-2010. Although in 2009 he publicly announced his conditional acceptance of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he later toughened his position, pledging 10 years later that such a state "will not be created, not like the one people are talking about. It won't happen."

The advent of Donald Trump’s US presidency in 2017 led to a close alignment between US and Israeli government policies, and within a year Donald Trump announced his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capitol and soon moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Just over a year later, President Trump also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, further reversing decades of US policy and earning Prime Minister Netanyahu's praise.
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In the past few years Prime Minister Netanyahu has been dogged by accusations of corruption and bribery; fancy gifts [cigars, champagne, etc] and positive media reports charges being announced in November 2019. The Prime Minister has denied all charges as the courts proceed; the spectacle of a trial threatens to bring ignominious closure to an extraordinary career. More here