Among the public at large, Benzion Netanyahu is known primarily as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's father. His professional achievements are known mainly through the title of professor preceding his name. It is safe to assume that his actual work and his writings have only been read by a handful of Israelis. This is because of the scope of his research -- the history of Spanish Jewry during the Middle Ages -- and because most of his works were never translated to Hebrew. Either way, the historian Benzion Netanyahu remained hidden from most. Those who insist on reading his works, among them a magnificent biography of the 15th-century Jewish commentator, philosopher, statesman and financier Don Isaac Abarbanel, will find that Netanyahu's research methods can be defined as no less than radical. The concept that guided him was casting doubt on historical assumptions that characterized Israel's academic research in the 1950s and 1960s. For Netanyahu, racial anti-Semitism didn't begin in Germany and in France at the end of the 19th century. For him, it began 400 years earlier in the Iberian Peninsula under the Inquisition, which he described as a radical religious cult that tried to rid Spain of "anusim" (Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity), not due to lack of faith, but due to their Jewish ancestry. This approach was revolutionary because it viewed Western and Eastern Jewish history as one continuous narrative in which anti-Semitism developed. In other words, according to Netanyahu, there is a linear link between the Inquisition and the Third Reich's security service. This runs contrary to the general assumption that anti-Semitism is an inclusive name for a wide variety of hate phenomena, directed at European Jews, which developed in accordance with the specific characteristics of a given geographical location. Today, one can clearly identify the historical legacy that Netanyahu the father instilled in his son. For the acting prime minister, the continuous line his father drew didn't end in Germany, but continued through to the Middle East and to Iran. Professor Netanyahu paid two-fold for his novel research approach: He was forced into academic exile for arguing against the assertions of most Israeli researchers. He was forced to migrate to the prestigious Cornell University in New York, where he completed the task of editing the Hebrew Encyclopedia. He was also ostracized for his political views. In Israel's academic circle, which was characterized by a uniform leftward lean, there was no room for revisionists like Netanyahu. Thus the Israeli academy lost out on an exemplary researcher whose work is a masterpiece of historical writing. But what is done can be somewhat rectified, and perhaps now someone will take on the task and translate Netanyahu's work into Hebrew, reserving a place of honor for him on the Israeli bookshelf.
