Netanyahu and Likud’s Leaders: The Israeli Princes

The research discusses the second-generation Likud leaders, known as the Princes, who have dominated Israeli politics for most of the last three decades: their relations with their parents and the extent to which they have followed in (or diverged from) their footsteps. The main theme seeks to explore the unique, perhaps unprecedented, socio-political phenomenon of generational duplication in a western-type democracy. The volume examines the ways and means through which the disciples of Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, managed not only to maintain lasting control of their mentor’s creation–transform after Israel’s establishment from a small opposition party into the country’s dominant and ruling party, but also hand down this political pre-eminence to their descendants. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, foreign minister of Jabotinsky’s movement. President Reuven Rivlin is the son of resistance warrior Rachel Rivlin. MP Benny Begin is the son of Menachem Begin and also former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and many others were part of those Princes. A breakthrough in the world’s inter-generational research, the book is for readers interested in political science, sociology, the politics of Israel and the Middle East.