Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv to Zila and professor Benzion Netanyahu, the middle child of three children. He was initially raised and educated in Jerusalem. Between 1956 and 1958, and again in 1963-67,[
8] his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where he attended and graduated from the Cheltenham High School and was active in a debate club. To this day, he speaks English with an American accent.[
9]
In 1967, after he graduated from high school, Netanyahu returned to Israel to enlist in the IDF. He served as a combat soldier and a commander in the elite special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. During his military service Netanyahu participated in various operations, including the hostages rescue mission from the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972. He was wounded during that operation as a result of another unit member's bullet emission. In 1972 Netanyahu left the army with the rank of captain.
After his army service Netanyahu returned to the United States, studied and eventually earned a B.S. degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1975, a M.S. degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1977, and studied political science at Harvard University and MIT. At that time he changed his name to Benjamin Ben Nitai (Nitai was the nickname that his father often used to sign his articles).[
9] Years later, in an interview with the media, Netanyahu clarified that he decided to do so to make it easier on his environment at the time, which was not fluent in Hebrew, so that they would be able to pronounce his name more easily. This fact has been used by his political rivals to accuse him indirectly of a lack of Israeli national identity and loyalty.[
10]
With the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 Netanyahu returned to Israel to participate in the war, joining the IDF forces battling at the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. After the war Netanyahu returned to complete his studies in the United States.
In 1976 Netanyahu lost his
older brother Yonatan Netanyahu, who served as the commander of the elite Israeli army commando unit Sayeret Matkal and was killed in action during the counter-terrorism hostage-rescue mission Operation Entebbe in which his unit rescued more than 100 hostages hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and flown to the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu[/left]