WATCH: Netanyahu's remarkable political journey to become Israel's longest serving prime minister

Read this article in:

"Frankly, I wasn’t interested,” Benjamin Netanyahu said, reflecting on his early disinterest in politics. When asked what changed, he responded, “Well, my brother died.”

In 1996, Netanyahu became Israel’s youngest ever prime minister.

Though not consecutively, he has now spent 16 years in office. Tracking his path from obscurity to global spokesman, his highs and lows, we look at the extraordinary career of Israel’s longest serving prime minister.

After losing his brother Yonatan in the Entebbe Raid to rescue a plane load of Israeli hostages in Uganda in 1976, Netanyahu quickly became interested in the forces opposing Israel and how to deal with them.

Around that time, while he was studying at MIT in Boston, Netanyahu came across a fellow MIT student from Israel, Uzi Landau, who was handing out leaflets about Israel on campus.

Landau, who would later go on to serve in several ministerial roles with the Likud party and then with Yisrael Beytenu, recalls how young Netanyahu challenged his thinking.

“Why is it like this and not like that? Do this and not that,” adding, “There was a lot of logic to what he said.”

Landau invited Netanyahu to a meeting, and the rest is history.

“He wore sandals then, standing and distributing leaflets for the sake of the State of Israel” said Netanyahu later at a Likud convention, appreciating Landau’s passion for the nation. “We worked together from that moment.”

With exceptional rhetoric skills, Netanyahu proved himself able to explain Israel’s affairs and dilemmas to hostile audiences worldwide, rapidly gaining appreciation from people at home.

However, Netanyahu’s career has been a series of challenges, marked by conflicts with Israel’s enemies and deep internal divisions within Israeli society.

There are multiple stories and aspects of the life and career of Benjamin Netanyahu – both admired and reviled, a national treasure and a figure of hatred. A single story does not cut it.

Click below to watch a KAN 11 documentary from six years ago that traces Netanyahu's remarkable journey to become Israel's longest-serving prime minister, surpassing Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion.