Shlomo Hillel

1923 -

Israeli politician.

Born in Baghdad, Shlomo Hillel immigrated to Palestine in 1930 and graduated from the prestigious Herzliyya High School in Tel Aviv. A member of the Haganah underground from his teens, he was a founder of Kibbutz Maʿagan Mikhaʾel in 1945 and managed the Ayalon Institute, a clandestine Haganah munitions factory. In 1947 he was recruited by Mossad le-Aliyah Bet (the clandestine Haganah immigration arm) and brought a planeload of Iraqi Jews to Palestine. From 1948 to 1951 he ran immigration operations in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iran and masterminded Operation Ezra and Nehemia, which airlifted 124,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel in 1950 and 1951. His best-selling book Operation Babylon, which appeared in 1987, recounts his experiences in immigration operations.

Elected to the Knesset on the Labor Party ticket in 1951, Hillel resigned in 1959 to join the foreign service. He was Israel's first ambassador to the Ivory Coast and Guinea. Later he headed the Africa Department of the Foreign Ministry and until 1967 served on the Israel Delegation to the United Nations. From 1967 to 1969 he was assistant director general of the Foreign Ministry, dealing with contacts with Palestinian Arab leadership in the occupied territories. Hillel was minister of police in the Golda Meir cabinet (1969 - 1974) and in the first Yitzhak Rabin cabinet (1974 - 1977). He also served briefly as minister of the interior. Re-elected to the Knesset in 1977, he served as its speaker from 1984 to 1988.

From 1989 to 1998 Hillel served as world chairman of Keren ha-Yesod - United Israel Appeal, responsible for fund-raising worldwide, with the exception of the United States. He was awarded the Israel prize in 1998 for lifetime achievement. He heads the Shazar Center for the Study of History and the Association for the Preservation of Historic Sites in Israel.

Bibliography

Hillel, Shlomo. Operation Babylon, translated by Ina Friedman. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987.

— MERON MEDZINI