Amnon Netzer, born on the 9th of April 1934 in Rasht, Iran, was the elder of three children. Amnon Netzer, who was known by the Persian name Nāṣer Soluki prior to his immigration to Israel in 1950, was born to a family of Jews from Isfahan, who had moved and settled in Rasht. His paternal grandfather, Šemuel, a cloth-merchant, had initially arrived in Rasht in 1917 in search of livelihood. The family had joined the rather small Jewish community of Rasht, which numbered some one hundred and twenty souls. Netzer’s childhood and early youth coincided mostly with the chaotic and crisis-ridden years of World War II and its aftermath in the Soviet-occupied province of Gilan during the years 1941-1947. Diverse hardships and deprivations, chief among them scarcity of food and basic commodities and widespread diseases and epidemics caused much suffering in the city and badly affected the life of Netzer’s family members. Amnon himself was infected with tuberculosis and in the absence of financial means and adequate health care nearly succumbed to death when he was six. An exceptionally gifted child, however, Netzer excelled in his studies and upon the completion of his primary education in the local Jewish school in 1947, he was chosen as the best student of the year in the entire school system of Rasht.

In September 1950, upon the completion of his high-school education in Isfahan, Netzer immigrated on his own to the newly-established and independent state of Israel. After a short period of acclamation in Kibbutz Gesher Ha-Ziv, in Western Galilee, he joined the Israeli Army. He completed his military service, between March 1951 – September 1953, in a combat unit attached to the Israeli Air Force. Following his discharge from the army, in 1953-4, Netzer was engaged in a number of communal, cultural, and educational activities among the rapidly growing and mostly disorganized and dispersed population of Iranian immigrants in Israel. In 1955, together with a group of like-minded immigrant activists of Iranian origin he founded in Tel Aviv the Organization of Iranian Immigrants (Ettehādia-ye mohājerin-e Irāni), with the goal of providing assistance and guidance to their fellow Iranian new-comers. In the same year Netzer founded and edited a Persian language bi-weekly named ha‘Oleh (The Immigrant), which gave voice to the diverse needs and concerns of the Persian-speaking immigrants across Israel. In April 1958, accepting a joint request on behalf of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the bureau of Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, Netzer established the Persian Language Program of Israel’s State Radio, known as Voice of Israel (Ṣedā-ye Esrā‘il). He served as the chief editor and announcer of that program until March 1963, when he departed to New York City to pursue his graduate studies. Among his main teachers were some of leading scholars and founders of the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in Israel.

At the center of his numerous research projects and extensive body of publications and writings, which varied in style and depth and were directed at different groups of readers in English and predominantly in Hebrew and Persian, stood the academic investigation, documentation, and dissemination of knowledge related to the history and cultural heritage of Iranian Jews during the various periods and stages of both Iranian and Jewish history. Of particular importance within his purely academic works are those that deal with Judeo-Persian language and literary tradition at large, and with individual manuscripts, texts, and treaties in particular. Ever since the completion of his doctoral dissertation, Netzer published and edited well over two hundred articles, books, monographs, surveys, book reviews, and more. Moreover, hand in hand with establishing and developing an academic curriculum devoted to Judeo-Persian studies at the Hebrew University, Netzer, together with his long-time friend and colleague Shaul Shaked organized the international Irano-Judaica conference. As of the mid-1990s, Netzer divided his time between Jerusalem and Los Angeles. In the latter city, among his other academic and public activities, he taught and supervised research students at the department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, pursued his research and edited and published articles and three volumes of Pādyāvand.

Over a period of more than three decades, until his retirement in 2004, Netzer taught continuously at the Hebrew University. He fulfilled a variety of academic positions and functions at the latter university, and took part in a long list of international conferences, scholarly projects, scientific missions, and field studies in Israel, Iran (particularly during the years 1971-1978), Europe, and the United States. Following his appointment as lecturer, he was promoted to the ranks of senior lecturer (with tenure), associate professor, and full professor in the course of 1970s-1990s. In addition to teaching and publishing, Netzer was also involved in fundraising on behalf of the Hebrew University and on behalf of students and researchers at other institutions of higher learning in Israel. The high regard and admiration he enjoyed among the Persian-speaking Jews in diaspora, and particularly his extensive contacts and bonds of friendship with numerous members of the Jewish Iranian communities in the United States and Europe aided him in his fund-raising efforts.