Aryeh Eliav: Information from Answers.com

Aryeh Eliav

Date of birth	21 November 1921 (1921-11-21) (age 88)
Place of birth	Moscow, Soviet Union
Year of aliyah	1924
Knessets	6, 7, 8, 9, 12
Party	Labor Party (1967-1968, 1991-1992)
Former parties	Alignment (1965-68, 1969-75, 1988-91) Independent (1975) Ya'ad – Civil Rights Movement (1975-1976) Independent Socialist Faction (1976-1977) Left Camp of Israel (1977-1979)

Aryeh "Lova" Eliav (Hebrew: אריה "לובה" אליאב‎, born Lev Lipschitz on 21 November 1921) is an Israeli politician and former member of the Knesset for several left-wing parties.

1 Biography
2 Achievements
3 Publications
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Biography

Born in Moscow in 1921, Eliav's family moved to Mandate Palestine in 1924. He studied history and sociology, gaining a BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and worked as a teacher and sociologist. He later served as a visiting professor in several American academic institutes, including two years at Harvard University (1979-1980) and his two terms at Trinity College in the 1990s.

As a teenager, he joined the Haganah in 1936 before joining the British Army in 1940, serving in an artillery unit. Upon his return home in 1945 he helped the Aliyah Bet movement and served as a colonel in the IDF. He later worked as an aide to Levi Eshkol on the topics of immigration, absorption and settlement. Between 1955 and 1957 he oversaw the foundation of several settlements in the Lakhish Regional Council area. During the Suez Crisis he supervised Operation Tushia, which transported the Jews of Port Said to Israel.

In 1958 he returned to Moscow, where he worked as the first secretary in the Israeli embassy, a position he held until 1960.

He was first elected to the Knesset in the 1965 on the Alignment's list, and was appointed Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry. During the Knesset term he became Deputy Minister of Immigrant Absorption.

He retained his seat in the 1969 election, but was not given a ministerial position. However, he did become general secretary of the Labour Party until 1971. After again retaining his seat in the 1973, he left the party, first sitting as an independent MK, before joining with the Ratz faction to form Ya'ad – Civil Rights Movement. However, the new party split up soon after its foundation, with Eliav founding a new party, the Social-Democratic Faction together with Marcia Freedman. The new party later changed its name to Independent Socialist Faction.

In the run up to the 1977 elections, he joined the Left Camp of Israel. The new party won only two seats, but a rotation agreement saw the terms shared by five people; Eliav served the first term, before resigning from the Knesset in January 1979 to make way for Uri Avnery. In 1984 he established a personal faction that ran in the elections that year, but failed to cross the electoral threshold by around 5,000 votes. In 1987 he returned to the Labor Party.

In 1987 he led a Jewish Agency project initiated by him to found Nitzana, a new educational community, in the Negev desert. Eliav returned to the Knesset after the 1988 elections. He served one last Knesset term and in 1992 he decided not to run for a new term.

Achievements

Eliav is one of the most decorated citizens of Israel, a Doctor of Honour of all important academic institutes of Israel and a 1988 winner of the Israel Prize for special contributions to society and the State of Israel.^[1] In 2003 he also won the Ben-Gurion Prize, and two years later was ranked 74th in a poll to find the 200 Greatest Israelis.