He regained his seat in the September 2019 Knesset election, representing the New Right (now a member of the Yamina alliance), and was appointed Minister of Defense, before leaving the position the following year.

[16] He is the youngest of three sons born to Jim and Myrna (née Lefko) Bennett,[17] American-Jewish immigrants who moved to Israel from San Francisco in July 1967.

[25][26] Bennett has two brothers; they are Asher, a former Israeli Navy submarine officer and businessman based in the United Kingdom, and Daniel, an accountant for Zim Integrated Shipping Services.

[21] Bennett attended Yavne Yeshiva High School in Haifa and became a group leader (madrich) in the religious Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva.

[34] He was called up as a reservist in the Maglan special forces unit during the 2006 Lebanon War and participated in a search and destroy mission behind enemy lines, operating against Hezbollah rocket launchers.

The IDF launched an artillery barrage to cover his force, and the shelling hit a United Nations compound in which civilians were taking refuge, an incident that became known as the Qana massacre.

[31][36] The incident resulted in a wave of international condemnation, and the subsequent diplomatic pressure caused Israel to end Operation Grapes of Wrath sooner than planned.

[36] Journalist Yigal Sarna, writing in Israeli national tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth, argued that Bennett displayed "poor judgement" during the operation.

"[37] Citing a "senior army figure", journalist Raviv Drucker said that Bennett's radio call for support after his unit came under fire was "hysterical" and contributed to the loss of life which occurred.

[36][38] In October 2023, immediately following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Bennett enlisted to do reserve duty, serving in the emergency storage unit of the IDF's Technological and Logistics Directorate.

[41][42] He moved to New York City in 2000 to oversee Cyota's corporate development, settling on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and lived there for four years.

Payoneer is set to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange with a $3.3 billion valuation after reaching a SPAC merger with FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp in February 2021.

[56] As Minister of Education, Bennett issued an official order prohibiting school principals from inviting members of Breaking the Silence and other organizations that denounce Israel's military conduct in the West Bank.

[73] In May 2020, with negotiations taking place between Netanyahu and Benny Gantz (leader of the centrist Blue and White alliance) to form a new government, Yamina announced that it would go into the opposition, ending Bennett's tenure as Defense Minister.

[74] The day before, Rafi Peretz, the leader of The Jewish Home, had split from the alliance, and would be named as the Minister of Jerusalem in the thirty-fifth government of Israel.

[84][85] On the fast of 9th of Av, 2021, as hundreds of Jews went to mourn on the temple mount, where it was forbidden for them to pray,[86] Bennett wrote: "The Jewish people twice had a Jewish state on the Land of Israel, and both times we did not succeed to complete the eighth decade as an independent state, because of internal wars and baseless hatred ... At the time of the Roman siege on Jerusalem, the nation was divided, each group entrenched itself in its own position, and burned the food stores of the others, as part of the internal power struggle, so the Romans had a much easier task.

The bitter end we all know, and until today every year on this date we mourn the awful destruction which a people with a little more baseless love, restraint, and listening, could have saved us from.

[94] At the time of Bennett's assumption of office, the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel had somewhat subsided, with a low national infection rate and with 55% of the Israeli population having received two or more COVID-19 vaccines.

In addition, Bennett denounced Iran's alleged state-sponsored terrorism, which he argued brought harm not only to Israel but also to many countries in the Middle East.

[112][113][114] Bennett then flew on the same day to Germany to brief German chancellor Olaf Scholz, updated French President Macron by telephone, and spoke with Zelenskyy twice in the evening, but few details were disclosed publicly.

[117] Bennett later faced criticism for putting himself forward as neutral mediator amid global condemnation of Putin, while refusing requests from Ukraine for military equipment.

In 2011, he stated that there were about 50 factories in the West Bank industrial region where Israelis and Palestinians work together and cited this as one workable approach to finding peace between the two sides.

"[132][133] Bennett was widely condemned for these words,[134] although he denied saying them, claiming he said merely that "terrorists should be killed if they pose an immediate life threat to our soldiers when in action.

"[136] In December 2014, a group of academics who opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and members of The Third Narrative, a Labor Zionist organization, called on the U.S. and E.U.

The academics, who called themselves Scholars for Israel and Palestine (SIP) and claimed to be "pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace", asked the U.S. and EU to freeze Bennett's foreign assets and impose visa restrictions.

[31] In spite of his expressed right-wing views against a Palestinian state, while engaged in coalition negotiations for a unity government with Yair Lapid and other party leaders following the 2021 Knesset election, during which he was offered the prime ministership, Bennett agreed to a policy of not annexing any territory in the West Bank and to not build any new settlements while being prime minister in a potential unity government.

He believes the key to reducing disparities is equality of opportunity and investment in education in the periphery, to give tools to populations of weaker economic backgrounds.

He supports the provision of land to veterans in the periphery, in the Negev, and the Galilee, to promote a national solution to the problem of "affordable housing"[144][145] and a more equitable distribution of the population in Israel.

The two main reasons for this shift are to take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets and to avert the threat of possible EU sanctions on Israel over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

[151] According to a Haaretz editorial, a fall in global commodity prices and dire financial straits among many Israeli consumers prompted the decline, not the reforms.