Haim Yosef Zadok
Haim Yosef Zadok was an Israeli jurist and politician. Zadok was born in 1913 in Rava-Ruska in Eastern Galicia in Austria-Hungary, he studied philosophy and Jewish studies at the University of Warsaw. He was a member of the Gordonia youth movement in the "Poale Zion Federation" Party. In 1935 he immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine and joined the Hagana and the Jewish Settlement Police, he was certified as a lawyer. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he joined the IDF as a lawyer in the office of the Chief Military Prosecutor. In 1949 he joined the legislative department of the Ministry of Justice as a deputy of the Attorney-General, a position he held until 1952. In 1958 he was elected to the Knesset for Mapai, he was chairman of the Knesset House Committee, member of the Constitution and Justice Committee, chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Affairs, member and chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He was involved in the passing of the Law on Inquiry Commissions and the Basic Law: the Government, as well as in attempts to pass basic laws on Legislation and Civil Rights, sections of which were passed in the Basic Laws on Human Dignity and Freedom and Freedom of Occupation.
From 1965 to 1966 he was Minister of Trade. In 1974 he became Minister of Justice, a position he held until the 1977 "Upheaval"; when Meir Shamgar was made a Judge, Zadok appointed Aharon Barak as Attorney-General. With the assistance of these advisors, he passed the Basic Law: the Military and the Basic Law: the State Economy. Towards the end of his tenure at the Ministry of Justice, the translation of the Mandatory Criminal Law Ordinance was completed, a new and integrated Penal Code was formulated. In the years 1974 to 1977 he was the first secular Minister of Religious Affairs, his tenure as Minister of Justice saw investigations of senior figures in the Israeli economy and Israeli politics, including the Yadlin affair, the Dollar Account affair and the suicide of Avraham Ofer. Zadok stood by Barak when he decided to prosecute, refused calls from within the Labor Party to intervene in the investigation, he allowed them to reside in IDF camps, as a compromise. He was among the initiators of the sarcastically named "Brilliant trick", in which Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sacked the National Religious Party ministers, a move which collapsed the government.
In 1978, he retired from political life. From 1978 to 1980 he was a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the 1980s and 1990s, alongside his work in his own private law office, Haim Zadok & Co. he devoted time to public activity. During the Kav 300 affair, he called for exercising the full rigor of the law with the Shin Bet, protested the attempts to subvert the investigation and to grant pardons before the legal process had been completed, he spoke out against the granting of a pardon to the members of the Jewish Underground and opposed the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He called for negotiations with the Palestinians and fought against the Law for the Direct Election of the Prime Minister, he represented Time Magazine when a libel suit was brought against it by Ariel Sharon concerning the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He was a member of many public committees, including the Shamgar Commission, which considered the definition of the role and appointment of the Attorney-General, he chaired committees that considered the regulation of police activity, the religious councils and the press.
In 1991, he was one of the founders of the Israel Democracy Institute and served as the first chairman of its board of directors. In 1993, he was made president of the Press Council, he held liberal views. In 1999 he was last on One Israel's list for the fifteenth Knesset and received the Solomon Bublick Award of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Zadok died in 2002 of a heart attack during a trip to Germany, he was given the Israel Democracy Institute Award by the IDI. He was cited as one of the Labor Party's greatest leaders by Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. “Law and Government”, edited with Abraham Ben Naftali “Issues in Government in Israel” Haim Yosef Zadok on the Knesset website "Zadok & Co. Advocates". Archived from the original on 2008-02-08. Retrieved 2008-06-19
Haim Cohn
Haim Herman Cohn was an Israeli jurist and politician. Haim Cohn was born in Germany in 1911 to a religious family, he was chairman of a World Agudath Israel branch in Hamburg. At age 18 he came to the British Mandate of Palestine to study at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he studied under rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, he was a Hazzan in Mea Shearim. He returned to Germany to complete his law studies at Frankfurt University, he emigrated to Palestine 1933 due to the rise of Nazism in Germany. He had earned with a PhD in law. In 1936 he was certified as a lawyer and the following year he opened an office in Jerusalem. After the establishment of the State of Israel, he was appointed manager of the legislation department of the Ministry of Justice, became State Attorney. In 1949 he was made CEO of the Ministry of Attorney General of Israel a year later; as Attorney General, he decided to indict Malchiel Gruenwald, starting the Rudolf Kastner trial and decided to ignore the law "and refrained from pressing charges on the conduct of homosexual relations between consenting adults."
In 1952 he was Minister of Justice, without being an MK. In 1960 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel, a position he held until his retirement in 1981. In addition to his civil service, he was a visiting lecturer in the Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem law schools, a representative of Israel in the United Nations Human Rights Council and a member of the International Court of Justice in Hague, he was a member of the "T'hila" Movement for Israeli Jewish secularism. He wrote five books, including The Trial and Death of Jesus in 1968, in which he argued that it was the Romans, not the Sanhedrin, who tried and executed Jesus, he died in 2002. President of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak cited him as one of the founders of Israeli law. In 1980, Cohn was awarded the Israel Prize in jurisprudence, he received honorary doctorates including Georgetown University. Cohn, Haim; the Trial and Death of Jesus. Ktav Pub Inc. ISBN 0-87068-432-9. Cohn, Haim Hermann. Of Law and Man: Essays in Honor of Haim H. Cohn: Under the Auspices of the.
Sabra Books. P. 387. ISBN 0-87631-044-7. List of Israel Prize recipients Haim Cohn on the Knesset website Shashar, Michael. "Haim Cohn and Yeshayahu Leibowitz, On God and Faith". Hofesh.org.il. Retrieved 2008-06-20. "Judge Haim Cohn RIP". Teacher.org.il. Retrieved 2008-06-20
Joseph Trumpeldor
Joseph Vladimirovich Trumpeldor, was an early Zionist activist who helped to organize the Zion Mule Corps and bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Trumpeldor died defending the settlement of Tel Hai in 1920 and subsequently became a Zionist national hero. According to a standard account, his last words, reminiscent of Horace, were: "It does not matter, it is good to die for our country." That he said these words has been challenged. Various versions exist, based on two primary witnesses, Dr George Gerry who had arrived in Israel just two weeks earlier, Abraham Harzfeld, his Hebrew was broken and stilted: he is known to have spoken Russian while his wounds were attended to. These days many consider the quote to be a legend. Joseph Trumpeldor was born in Pyatigorsk in the North Caucasus of the Russian Empire, his father, Wulf Trumpeldor, served as a cantonist in the Caucasian War, as a "useful Jew", was allowed to live outside the Pale of Settlement. Though proudly Jewish, Trumpeldor's upbringing was more Russian than traditionally Jewish.
In training as a dentist, Joseph Trumpeldor volunteered for the Russian army in 1902. During the Russo-Japanese War, he participated in the siege of Port Arthur, where he lost his left arm to shrapnel, he elected to complete his service. When he was questioned about his decisions and told that he was advised not to continue fighting given his handicap, he responded "but I still have another arm to give to the motherland." When Port Arthur surrendered, Trumpeldor went into Japanese captivity. He spent his time printing a newspaper on Jewish affairs and organized history and literature classes, he befriended several prisoners who shared his desire of founding a communal farm in Palestine. On return from captivity, he moved to St. Petersburg. Trumpeldor subsequently received four decorations for bravery including the Cross of St. George, which made him the most decorated Jewish soldier in Russia. In 1906 he became the first Jew in the army to receive an officer's commission. Due to his handicap he began to study law.
He gathered a group of young Zionists around him and in 1911 they emigrated to Palestine part of the Ottoman Empire. At first he joined a farm on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, worked for a time at Kibbutz Degania; when World War I broke out, being an enemy national, he went to Egypt, where together with Ze'ev Jabotinsky he developed the idea of the Jewish Legion to fight with the British against common enemies and the Zion Mule Corps was formed in 1915, considered to be the first all-Jewish military unit organized in close to two thousand years, the ideological beginning of the Israel Defense Forces. He saw action in the Battle of Gallipoli with the Zion Mule Corps, where he was wounded in the shoulder; the Zion Mule Corps remained in Gallipoli through the entire campaign and was disbanded shortly after being transferred to Britain. Upon his return to Petrograd, Russia in 1918, he organised Jews to defend themselves and established the HeHalutz, a youth organization that prepared immigrants for aliyah, returned to the British Mandate of Palestine himself.
On 1 March 1920, several hundred Shiites, from the village of Jabal Amel in southern Lebanon, gathered at the gate of Tel Hai, one of four Jewish farming villages in an isolated bloc at the northern end of the Upper Galilee's Hulah Valley. Gangs of clan-based border peasants, combining politics and banditry, were active in the area of the loosely defined border between the soon to be established British Mandate of Palestine, French Mandate of Lebanon and of Syria; the Shiites believed that some French troops had taken refuge with the Jews and demanded to search the premises. The Jews tried to maintain neutrality in the chaos sheltering both Arabs and French. On this day there were no French soldiers, the Jews assented to a search. One of the farmers fired a shot into the air, a signal for reinforcements from nearby Kfar Giladi, which brought ten men led by Trumpeldor, posted by Hashomer to organize defense, it is unclear what happened once Trumpeldor assumed command, but an early report speaks of'misunderstanding on both sides'.
A major firefight raged in which seven Jews and five Arabs were killed outright. The eight Jews were buried in two common graves in Kfar Giladi, both locations were abandoned for a time. After his death, Trumpeldor became a symbol of Jewish self-defence, his memorial day on the 11th day of Adar is noted in Israel every year; the last words attributed to him, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country", became famous in the pre-state Zionist movement and in Israel of the 1950s and 1960s. According to Aviel Roshwald, the authenticity of Trumpeldor's final utterance is well-attested and not questioned by historians despite a widespread belief that they are apocryphal. Other historians state. In the wake of popular scepticism in the 1970s, a counter-version to the official glorified legend starting as a joke, discredited the educational tale of his final hours by suggesting that his last words were in fact a pungent curse in his mother-tongue Russian, reflecting frustration with his bad luck.
Trumpeldor spoke only broken Hebrew: in his last hours he mumbled requests in his native Russian to have his wounds bandaged, the
Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1923 in the Middle East corresponding the region of Palestine, as part of the Partition of the Ottoman Empire under the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine. During the First World War, an Arab uprising and the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force under General Edmund Allenby drove the Turks out of the Levant during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign; the United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence if they revolted against the Ottomans, but the two sides had different interpretations of this agreement, in the end, the UK and France divided up the area under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Further complicating the issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising British support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. At the war's end the British and French set up a joint "Occupied Enemy Territory Administration" in what had been Ottoman Syria.
The British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922. The formal objective of the League of Nations mandate system was to administer parts of the defunct Ottoman Empire, in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone." The civil Mandate administration was formalized with the League of Nations' consent in 1923 under the British Mandate for Palestine, which covered two administrative areas. During the British Mandate period the area experienced the ascent of two major nationalist movements, one among the Jews and the other among the Arabs; the competing national interests of the Arab and Jewish populations of Palestine against each other and against the governing British authorities matured into the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 and the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, before culminating in the Civil War of 1947–1948. The aftermath of the Civil War and the consequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War led to the establishment of the 1949 cease-fire agreement, with partition of the former Mandatory Palestine between the newborn state of Israel with a Jewish majority, the Arab West Bank annexed by the Jordanian Kingdom and the Arab All-Palestine Protectorate in the Gaza Strip under Egypt.
Following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920 a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner replaced the military administration; the first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, a Zionist and a recent British cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920 to take up his appointment from 1 July. Following the arrival of the British, the inhabitants established Muslim-Christian Associations in all the major towns. In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem, its aimed at representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration. At the First World Congress of Jewish Women, held in Vienna, Austria, 1923, it was decided that: "It appears, therefore, to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country." The Zionist Commission formed in March 1918 and became active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine.
On 19 April 1920, elections took place for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community. The Zionist Commission received official recognition in 1922 as representative of the Palestinian Jewish community. One of the first actions of the newly installed civil administration in 1921 had been to grant Pinhas Rutenberg—a Jewish entrepreneur—concessions for the production and distribution of electrical power. Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organisations and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof; the British administration claimed that electrification would enhance the economic development of the country as a whole, while at the same time securing their commitment to facilitate a Jewish National Home through economic—rather than political—means. Samuel tried to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate, but the Arab leadership refused to co-operate with any institution which included Jewish participation.
When Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and Muslim leader; as Grand Mufti, as well as in the other influential positions that he held during this period, al-Husseini played a key role in violent opposition to Zionism. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council, established by Samuel in December 1921; the Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency's annual budget. In addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts had the power to appoint preachers; the 1922 Palestine Order in Council established a Legislative Council, to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, the High Commissioner.
Of the 12 elected members, eight were to be Muslim Arabs, two Christian Arabs, two Jews. Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was
Rezső Kasztner
Rezső Kasztner known as Rudolf Israel Kastner, was a Jewish-Hungarian journalist and lawyer who became known for having helped Jews escape from occupied Europe during the Holocaust. He was assassinated in 1957 after an Israeli court accused him of having collaborated with the Nazis. Kasztner was one of the leaders of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, which smuggled Jewish refugees into Hungary during World War II helped them escape from Hungary when in March 1944 the Nazis invaded that country too. Between May and July 1944, Hungary's Jews were deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz at the rate of 12,000 people a day. Kasztner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS officer, to allow 1,684 Jews to leave instead for Switzerland on what became known as the Kastner train, in exchange for money and diamonds. Kasztner moved to Israel after the war, becoming a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1952. In 1953 he was accused of having been a Nazi collaborator in a pamphlet self-published by Malchiel Gruenwald, a freelance writer.
The allegation stemmed from his relationship with Eichmann and another SS officer, Kurt Becher, from his having given positive character references after the war for Becher and two other SS officers, thus allowing Becher to escape prosecution for war crimes. The Israeli government sued Gruenwald for libel on Kasztner's behalf, resulting in a trial that lasted 18 months, a ruling in 1955 that Kasztner had, in the words of Judge Benjamin Halevy, "sold his soul to the devil". By saving the Jews on the "Kasztner train", while failing to warn others that their "resettlement" was in fact deportation to the gas chambers, Kasztner had sacrificed the mass of Jewry for a chosen few, the judge said; the verdict triggered the fall of the Israeli Cabinet. Kasztner resigned his government position and became a virtual recluse, telling reporters he was living with a loneliness "blacker than night, darker than hell", his wife fell into a depression that left her unable to get out of bed, while his daughter's schoolmates threw stones at her in the street.
Kasztner was shot on March 3, 1957 by Zeev Eckstein, part of a three-man squad from a group of veterans from the pre-state militia Lehi led by Yosef Menkes and Yaakov Heruti, died of his injuries twelve days later. The Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment against Kasztner in January 1958, stating in a 4–1 decision that the lower court had "erred seriously". Kasztner was born in 1906 in Austria-Hungary, into a local community of 15,000 Jews; the governance of the city was unstable, moving forth between Hungary and Romania. It became Cluj, Romania in 1920, was returned to Hungary in 1940 was restored to Romania by the Treaty of Paris in 1947, after the Soviet and Romanian armies defeated German and Hungarian forces in the winter of 1944–45. Kasztner was raised with his two brothers in a two-story brick house in the southern part of the city by his father, Yitzhak, a merchant and a religious man who spent most of his day in the synagogue, his mother, who ran the family store.
Helen decided that her sons should attend a regular high school, rather than a religious one, because the curriculum was broader and included languages. By the time Kasztner graduated, he spoke eight languages: Hungarian, French and Latin, along with Yiddish and Aramaic. Anna Porter writes that he became known for his good looks, sharp mind, quick wit, his intense concentration, as a result of which his mother decided he should study law, though his heart was in politics. Jewish entry to universities had been limited by the 1920 Numerus Clausus Act, the first antisemitic legislation in 20th century Europe; the law limited Jewish university places to six percent, reflecting their representation within the population, although the legislation was allowed to lapse eight years it affected Kasztner's teenage political orientation, he decided at the age of 15 to become a Zionist. He joined a Zionist youth group, which trained its members to become citizens of the Land of Israel, becoming its leader within a year.
His older brother, had emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1924 to work on a kibbutz, but Kasztner was still at high school and so unable to go with him. He played his part in the Zionist movement by writing articles on British policies in Palestine for the local Jewish newspaper, Új Kelet; when Kasztner was 22, his father died reading the Torah in the synagogue on the seventh day of Passover. He had to put off any ideas about emigrating, he went to law school, as she wished worked full-time for Új Kelet after graduating, at first working as a sports reporter, though he continued to write about politics. He became an assistant to Dr. József Fischer, a lawyer, member of Parliament, president of the Jewish Community of Kolozsvár, leading member of the National Jewish Party. Fischer admired Kasztner's writing, encouraged him to continue working for Új Kelet too. Porter writes, he was known for being unable to suffer fools gladly, dismissing people as stupid or intellectual cowards. "He had no sense of other people's sensitivities, or he didn't care whether he alienated his friends," Dezsö Hermann, one of Kasztner's friends at law school, told Porter.
"Back in Kolozsvár, Jews kept their heads down. Not Rezső."Ladislaus Löb quotes Kasztner's associate Joel Brand as saying that Kasztner was the "prototype of the snobbish intellectual" but showed "marvellous courage at criti
Dov Yosef
Dov Yosef was an Israeli statesman. He served as military governor of Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, he held ministerial positions in nine Israeli governments. Bernard Joseph was born in Montreal, Canada, he attended McGill University, Université Laval, the University of London, qualifying as an attorney. Yosef founded the Canadian Young Judaea Zionist youth movement in 1917, immigrated to Palestine in 1918 with the Canadian Jewish Legion which he helped organize. After the end of World War I, Yosef worked as an attorney in Mandatory Palestine. During Israel's War of Independence he served Military Governor of Jerusalem during the Blockade. In 1933 Yosef joined David Ben-Gurion's Mapai party. Three years he became legal adviser to the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, he became a member of the Jewish Agency Executive Committee and a member of the World Zionist Organisation's Political Committee. In December 1947 the Jewish Agency appointed him head of the Jerusalem Emergency Committee and in August 1948 he became Military Governor of Jerusalem.
He was elected to the first Knesset in January 1949. He was appointed Minister of Rationing and Supply in the first government, a key position during the austerity period. In June 1949 he was appointed Agriculture Minister; the first government collapsed in October 1950 due to wranglings over refugee camps and religious education, but because Ben-Gurion wanted the Rationing and Supply Ministry closed down. The Prime Minister got his way, in the new government Yosef was moved to the transportation ministry, he retained his seat in the 1951 elections, was appointed as both Minister of Justice and Minister of Minister of Trade and Industry, losing the former portfolio in June 1952. After the government collapsed again over the issue of religious education in December 1952, Yosef was appointed Minister without Portfolio in the new government, before switching to the Development Ministry in June 1953, he retained this position in the new government formed by Moshe Sharett after Ben-Gurion had resigned to go and live on Kibbutz Sde Boker.
After Sharett resigned and formed a new government again in 1955, Yosef remained Development Minister, but became Minister of Health. He was not appointed to a ministerial post, he lost his seat in the 1959 elections, never regained MK status. However, during the fifth Knesset he was appointed Minister of Justice by Ben-Gurion despite being outside the Knesset; when Ben-Gurion was replaced by Eshkol he remained Justice Minister, but was not reappointed after the 1965 elections. Yosef caused a political scandal when he published in 1960 an autobiographic book, "The Faithful City", which focused on the siege of Jerusalem in 1948, he claimed that David Shaltiel, the commander of Jerusalem gave him a wrong picture of the situation in the city, causing the fall of the old city. Dov Yosef on the Knesset website The Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem site. Office of Dov Joseph and Louis Arieh Pincus
Eighteenth government of Israel
The eighteenth government of Israel was formed by Menachem Begin on 20 June 1977, following the May 1977 elections. It was the first government in Israeli political history led by a right-wing party, with the coalition consisting of Begin's Likud, the National Religious Party and Agudat Yisrael. Begin's government contained Moshe Dayan, elected to the Knesset on the Alignment's list. Following Dayan's acceptance of a place in the cabinet, he was expelled from the party and sat as an independent MK, though he only remained in the cabinet for four months. Begin held four portfolios in addition to the position of Prime Minister whilst he negotiated with Dash, which had won 15 seats, making it the third largest party in the Knesset. Negotiations were concluded in October 1977, Dash joined the government, taking the four portfolios plus a Deputy Prime Minister position. However, after its collapse in 1978 all its MKs except Yigael Yadin left the government. Defense Minister Ezer Weizman lost his job in May 1980 following confrontations with Begin and Ariel Sharon.
Following the 1978 South Lebanon conflict Weizman proposed forming a national unity government with the Alignment to stimulate the peace process. The idea was dismissed by Begin, leading to Weizman criticising Likud for being stubborn and uncompromising. Following a dispute with Sharon over settlements in the occupied territories, Weizman considered establishing a new party with Moshe Dayan and was expelled from Likud. After a spell out of politics, Weizman founded a new party and returned to the Knesset following the 1984 elections, whilst Dayan founded Telem. Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz left the government following disagreements within Likud. Hurvitz defected again to Telem; the government was in office until 5 August 1981 when the nineteenth government took office following the 1981 elections. 1 Although Landau was not an MK during the ninth Knesset, he had been an MK for Likud. Ninth Knesset: Government 18 Knesset website
