page_title: Benjamin Netanyahu
section_title: Marriages and relationships
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin Netanyahu / Personal life / Marriages and relationships
caption_attribution_description: P.M. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU LIGHTING HANUKA CANDLES ON THE 1ST NIGHT IN THE P.M.'S OFFICE IN JERUSALEM WITH THE HELP OF HIS WIFE, SARA SONS, YAIR AND AVNER (05/12/1996). ראש הממשלה, בנימין נתניהו, מדליק נרות חנוכה במשרד ראש הממשלה עם אישתו, שרה וילדיו, יאיר ואבנר Photo: OHAYON AVI.
context_page_description: Benjamin Netanyahu is an Israeli politician serving as Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, and previously from 1996 to 1999. Netanyahu is also the Chairman of the Likud – National Liberal Movement. He is the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history and the first to be born in Israel after the establishment of the state.
  Born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents, Netanyahu was raised in both Jerusalem and the Philadelphia area of the United States. He returned to Israel immediately upon graduating high school in 1967 to join the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War. Netanyahu became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit and took part in many missions, including Operation Gift and Operation Isotope, during which he was shot in the shoulder. Netanyahu fought on the front lines in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory. Netanyahu achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
context_section_description: Netanyahu has been married three times. Netanyahu's first marriage was to Miriam Weizmann, whom he met in Israel. Weizmann lived near Yonatan Netanyahu's apartment in Jerusalem, where Netanyahu was based during his military service. By the time Netanyahu's service was finished, Weizmann had completed her own military service and a degree in chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1972, they both left to study in the United States, where she enrolled in Brandeis University, while Netanyahu studied at MIT. They married soon afterward. The couple had one daughter, Noa (born 29 April 1978).
  In 1978, while Weizmann was pregnant, Netanyahu met a non-Jewish British student named Fleur Cates at the university library, and began an affair. His marriage ended in divorce soon afterward, when his wife Miriam discovered the affair. In 1981, Netanyahu married Cates, and she converted to Judaism. The couple divorced in 1984.
  His third wife, Sara Ben-Artzi, was working as a flight attendant on an El Al flight from New York to Israel when they met. She was in the process of completing a master's degree in psychology. The couple married in 1991. They have two sons: Yair (born 26 July 1991), a former soldier in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, and Avner (born 10 October 1994), a national Bible champion and winner of the National Bible Quiz for Youth in Kiryat Shmona.
  In 1993, Netanyahu confessed on live television to having had an affair with Ruth Bar, his public relations adviser. He said that a political rival had planted a secret video camera that had recorded him in a sexually compromising position with Bar, and that he had been threatened with the release of the tape to the press unless he quit the Likud leadership race. Netanyahu and Sara repaired their marriage, and he was elected to the leadership of Likud. In 1996, the media reported that he had a 20-year friendship with Katherine Price-Mondadori, an Italian-American woman. During the 1990s, Netanyahu criticized this media intrusion into his private life, claiming that political rivals including David Levy had hired spies to try to gather evidence of alleged affairs. The Israeli public are generally not interested in their politicians' private lives and would prefer they remained private.
  On 1 October 2009, his daughter Noa Netanyahu-Roth (married to Daniel Roth) gave birth to a boy, Shmuel. In 2011, Noa and her husband Daniel had a second son named David, and in 2016 had a daughter. Noa is a baalat teshuva (someone born to a secular family who returned to Orthodox Judaism) and lives in Mea Shearim with her family.
caption: Netanyahu lighting Hanukkah candles on the first night in the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem with his wife, Sara and their sons, Yair and Avner, 1996
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