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Shlomo Hillel

 
Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Shlomo Hillel
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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

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Wikipedia: Shlomo Hillel
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Shlomo Hillel
Date of birth 23 April 1923 (1923-04-23) (age 86)
Place of birth Baghdad, Iraq
Year of aliyah 1934
Knesset(s) 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Party Labor Party (1991-1992)
Former parties Mapai (1951-1959)
Alignment (1969-1991)
Gov't roles
(current in bold)		 Minister of Police
Minister of Internal Affairs

Shlomo Hillel (Hebrew: שלמה הלל‎, born 23 April 1923) is an Iraqi-born Israeli diplomat and politician who served as Speaker of the Knesset, Minister of Police and Minister of Internal Affairs. He was also an ambassador to several countries in Africa.

Contents

Biography

Born in Baghdad in Iraq, Hillel immigrated to Mandate Palestine with his family in 1934 at the age of eleven.[1] After graduating from the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv, he underwent agricultural training in kibbutz Degania Alef, and later Pardes Hana. Hillel was secretary of a Hebrew Scouts group which later established Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael. In 1945, Hillel and his colleagues worked at a Haganah munitions factory disguised as a laundry facility in the basement of the Ayalon Institute in Rehovot.[2][3] He studied political science, economics and public administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He marred Temima, with whom he has two children, a son and a daughter,[1] and currently lives in Ramat Denya in Jerusalem.

Operation Ezra and Nehemiah

In 1946, Hillel flew to Baghdad on an Iraqi passport and remained there for one year. He visited Baghdad again in 1950 to negotiate the mass immigration of the Jews of Iraq, 120,000 of whom were airlifted to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah between 1950 and 1952. On these trips, he disguised himself as either a Frenchman or an Englishman. The airlift was made possible through the cooperation of Iran, which was a close ally of Israel at the time.[4][5]

Hillel's partner was Ronnie Barnett, a British Jew who worked for Trans-Ocean Airlines. While organizing pilgrimages to Mecca, Barnett met the director of a travel agency called Iraq Tours, Abdul Rahman Raouf.[6] Barnett and Raouf met in Rome and Hillel came along as "Richard Armstrong." Raouf realized that there was money to be made in transporting the Jews out of Iraq, and arranged for the two to meet with the prime minister of Iraq, Tawfiq al-Suweidi, who was a board member of his company.[1] They visited the prime minister at his home. Al-Suweidi complained that the illegal emigration of the Jews was harming Iraq because they were probably smuggling out property and leaving without paying their taxes. According to his estimates, at least 60,000 Jews would leave the country if they could. They agreed on a ticket price of 12 dinars (about $48) per ticket.[1]

Political and diplomatic career

For the 1951 Knesset elections Hillel was given a place on the Mapai list. Although he failed to win a seat, he entered the Knesset on 21 December 1952 as a replacement for the deceased Eliyahu Hacarmeli. He was re-elected in 1955, but resigned from the Knesset shortly before the 1959 elections, after which he joined the foreign service, and was appointed ambassador to Guinea in 1959. In 1961 he became ambassador to Côte d'Ivoire, Dahomey, Republic of Upper Volta, and Niger, before becoming a member of the Israeli Delegation to the United Nations between 1963 and 1967. He returned to Israel in 1967, serving as the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1969.[4]

In 1969, Hillel returned to the Knesset on the Alignment list. He served consecutively from the 1969 elections until the 1992 elections, in which he lost his seat. He was Minister of Police between 1969 and 1977, and Interior Minister in 1974 and 1977. In 1984 he was elected Speaker of the eleventh Knesset.[4]

Awards

In 1988, Hillel was awarded the Israel Prize, for his special contribution to the society and the State of Israel[7].

He currently serves as president of the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites.

Published work

In 1984, Hillel published Operation Babylon: The Story of the Rescue of the Jews of Iraq, a memoir of the operation, which was later translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Arabic.[8][4]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Shlomo Hillel in London The Scribe, Autumn 2001
  2. ^ Chotkovsky, Meir (2007-11-02). "Former Speaker of the Knesset Shlomo Hillel: I am still optimistic" (in Hebrew). Interview with Shlomo Hillel. Scoop. http://www.scoop.co.il/article.html?id=10841. Retrieved 2008-05-20. 
  3. ^ Horovitz, David (2007-04-12), "Editor's Note:Role models", The Jerusalem Post, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1176152784189&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull, retrieved 2008-05-20 
  4. ^ a b c d "Shlomo Hillel". Knesset. http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=380. Retrieved 2008-05-20. 
  5. ^ Middleton, Drew (1988-01-05), "Books: Iraq's Jews", The New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D8173FF936A35752C0A96E948260&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss, retrieved 2008-05-20 
  6. ^ Escaping modern Babylon Haaretz
  7. ^ "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1998 (in Hebrew)". http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/TashnagTashsab/TASNAG_TASNAT_Rikuz.htm?DictionaryKey=Tashnach. 
  8. ^ Books: Iraq's Jews New York Times

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