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Benjamin (or Binyamin) Netanyahu (בִּנְיָמִין נְתַנְיָהוּ, born October 21, 1949) is an Israeli politician who is the longest serving Prime Minister in that country's history. As of this writing (2025), he has held the premiership on three separate occasions: first from 1996 to 1999, again from 2009 to 2021, and since 2022. During these tenures he has led a total of six governments.
In recent years, his premiership has been marked by a number of disturbing right wing and authoritarian tendencies:
- He has brought a number of extreme religious fundamentalist minor parties into government, and has granted unprecedented legal privileges to their ultra-conservative interpretation of Judaism.
- He has pursued a series of judicial reforms which if fully enacted would effectively remove the most formidable check on executive power within the Israeli government.
- He has continued supporting the establishment of illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories, as well as imposing a blockade which has long prevented humanitarian supplies from entering the Gaza Strip.
He has also been indicted for a wide variety of felonies related to political corruption and abuse of power. Rather than seek to clear his name in court, he has claimed immunity from criminal prosecution as incumbent premier in order to stonewall and delay his trial.
In 2023 he presided over the greatest failure of Israel's usually formidable intelligence service in the last fifty years. His government failed to prevent a series of coordinated terrorist strikes by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent taking of over 100 Israeli civilians as hostages. He then led a military response which, over the course of fifteen months, caused the deaths of more 40,000 civilians and precipitated one of the most dire humanitarian crises in recent history. A number of governments and intergovernmental organizations have argued that the Israeli government's conduct over this period constitutes genocide, and in November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Netanyahu's arrest.
Netanyahu has held several other posts throughout his political career, including Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988. It is his tenure in this office which is most relevant to Harry Turtledove's canon.
Benjamin Netanyahu in "Notes from the General Secretariat"[]
Israel's ambassador to the U.N. stated that his country was entitled to the lands Israel has occupied since 1967 based on Biblical precedent. In his written response, Kelvin R. Throop, writing as "Beals Becker," "bestowed" the United Nations' award for "most splendidly antique irrelevance."
Becker then went on to note that the Arab claim to Palestine only went back to the 7th century, that the Greeks and the Turkish people had only been fighting over Cyprus for four hundred years, and that the Ulstermen had been in Northern Ireland for three centuries. Becker described them as "pikers."
Becker concluded by asking the ambassador if he was glad that there were no Canaanites left to complain about the Hebrews' behavior.
Becker's valediction was "Awedly, Beals Becker."[1]
Literary Comment[]
While Netanyahu is not named, he was the incumbent ambassador to the U.N. at the time of writing.
See Also[]
- Prime Minister Binyamin, a fictional analog of Netanyahu in Alpha and Omega.
References[]
- ↑ Analog: The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fact, Vol CV, No 8, August, 1985, pg. 175.
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