section_path: Early life and military career/College education
section_name: College education
paragraph_text: College education
  
  Netanyahu returned to the United States in late 1972 to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After briefly returning to Israel to fight in the Yom Kippur War, he returned to the United States and, under the name Ben Nitay, completed a bachelor's degree in architecture in February 1975 and earned a master's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1976. Concurrently, he was studying towards a doctorate in political science, until his studies were broken off by the death of his brother in the Entebbe raid.
  
  At MIT, Netanyahu studied a double-load while simultaneously taking courses at Harvard University, completing his bachelor's degree in architecture in two and a half years, despite taking a break to fight in the Yom Kippur War. Professor Leon B. Groisser at MIT recalled: "He did superbly. He was very bright. Organized. Strong. Powerful. He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done."
  
  At that time he changed his name to Benjamin " Ben " Nitai (Nitai, a reference to both Mount Nitai and to the eponymous Jewish sage Nittai of Arbela, was a pen name often used by his father for articles). Years later, in an interview with the media, Netanyahu clarified that he decided to do so to make it easier for Americans to pronounce his name. This fact has been used by his political rivals to accuse him indirectly of a lack of Israeli national identity and loyalty.
  
  In 1976, Netanyahu's older brother Yonatan Netanyahu was killed. Yonatan was serving as the commander of Benjamin's former unit, the Sayeret Matkal, and was the only Israeli death in the counter-terrorism hostage-rescue mission Operation Thunderbolt, in which his unit rescued more than 100 mostly Israeli hostages hijacked by terrorists and flown to the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.