JERUSALEM, April 30 (UPI) -- Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel's prime minister, died Monday at the age of 102.
The senior Netanyahu was a historian and writer who specialized in medieval Spanish Jewry and was a professor emeritus at Cornell University in the United States, where he lived for many years and was a Revisionist leader in the Zionist Movement, Haaretz reported.
Benzion Netanyahu was born in Warsaw Poland in 1910, emigrated to Palestine in 1920 and eventually settled in Jerusalem. He married in 1944 and was the father of three sons: Binyamin, the prime minister; Yonatan, a Sayeret Matkal commander who was killed during Operation Entebbe in 1976: and Ido, a physician, playwright and author, Ynetnews.com said.
Two years ago, to mark Benzion Netanyahu's 100th birthday, the prime minister said his father "taught me that those who are unfamiliar with the past cannot understand the present and those who cannot understand the present cannot see what lies ahead."
The funeral was scheduled Monday.
