Yitzhak Navon
{{Short description|President of Israel from 1978 to 1983}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{for|the railway station|Jerusalem–Yitzhak Navon railway station}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name = Yitzhak Navon
| nationality = Israeli
| image = Portrait of MP Yitzhak Navon.jpg
| caption = Navon in 1965
| order = 5th
| office = President of Israel
| primeminister = Menachem Begin
| term_start = 29 May 1978
| term_end = 5 May 1983
| predecessor = Ephraim Katzir
| successor = Chaim Herzog
| office2 = Member of the Knesset
| term_start2 = 13 August 1984
| term_end2 = 13 July 1992
| term_start3 = 22 November 1965
| term_end3 = 18 April 1978
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1921|4|9|df=y}}
| birth_place = Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2015|11|6|1921|4|9|df=y}}
| death_place = Jerusalem, Israel
| constituency =
| party = Alignment
| spouse = {{marriage|Ofira Resnikov|1963|1993|reason=d}}
{{marriage|Miri Shafir|2008}}
| children = 2
| profession = Author
| signature = Yitzhak Navon signature.svg
| footnotes = |
| native_name = {{Nobold|{{Script/Hebrew|יצחק נבון}}}}
| native_name_lang = he
}}
Yitzhak Rachamim Navon ({{langx|he|יצחק נבון}}{{ltr}}; 9 April 1921 – 6 November 2015) was an Israeli politician, diplomat, playwright, and author. He served as the fifth President of Israel between 1978 and 1983 as a member of the centre-left Alignment party. He was the first Israeli president born in Jerusalem and the first Sephardi Jew to serve in that office.
Biography
Navon was born in Jerusalem to Yosef and Miryam Navon, a descendant of a Sephardi Jewish family of rabbis, and had ancestry in Jerusalem going back centuries. On his father's side, he was descended from Sephardi Jews who settled in Turkey after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. His ancestors, the Baruch Mizrahi family immigrated from Turkey to Jerusalem in 1670. On his mother's side, he was descended from the renowned Moroccan-Jewish kabbalist rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, who immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem in 1742.
In 1924, the Navon family moved from Jaffa Road to the Ohel Moshe neighbourhood in Nachlaot. In 1932, they moved to Sheikh Badr near the western entrance to Jerusalem, relocating to Mekor Baruch in 1936.[https://web.archive.org/web/20211229065505/https://catalog.archives.gov.il/en/chapter/timeline-major-events-yitzhak-navons-life/ Timeline: Major events in Yitzhak Navon’s life]
He attended the Doresh Tziyon and Takhemoni elementary schools and the Hebrew University high school.{{cite news |last1= Aderet |first1= Ofer |last2= Lis |first2= Jonathan |title= Yitzhak Navon, Fifth President of Israel, Dies at 94 |url= http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.684680 |access-date=8 November 2015 |publisher= Haaretz |date=7 November 2015}}
Navon studied Arabic and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He taught Hebrew literature for several years. He was fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, Ladino, French and English.
Navon was a member of the Haganah's Arab Intelligence Unit and worked undercover in Jerusalem. During the war, he listened to wiretapped conversations of the British Army. Later he was sent by the Israeli foreign service to Uruguay and Argentina to track down Nazis.
Navon was married to Ofira Navon née Resnikov, who died of cancer in 1993. Navon died in Jerusalem at the age of 94 on 6 November, 2015.{{cite news |last=Lis |first= Jonathan |title= Yitzhak Navon, Israel's Fifth President, Laid to Rest at Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl Cemetery |url= http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.684785 |publisher= Haaretz |date=8 November 2015}}
Political career
File:Yitzhak and Ophira Navon with David Ben-Gurion.jpg
In 1951, Navon became the political secretary of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The following year he was appointed Ben-Gurion's bureau chief. He remained in this position under Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. His judgment was crucial to advice the government received during the Suez Crisis and Lavon Affair.
In 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister and Navon became a civil service department head at the Ministry of Education and Culture. Navon began a long campaign fighting illiteracy in Israel, which affected about 12% of the Jewish population.
It's a shame and disgrace that more than 200,000 adults in Israel do not know how to read or write in any language, and we must do everything possible to erase this stain from us.Navon ordered the mobilisation of hundreds of female soldiers serving compulsory national service to teach illiterate adults to read and write Hebrew. Two years later, Navon was elected to the Knesset as a member of Ben-Gurion's Rafi. The new party which had dared challenge the Mapai establishment was driven by 'modernization and scientification'; it merged into the Israeli Labor Party (part of the Alignment) in 1968.{{cite book |first=M. |last=Gilbert |title=Israel: A History |publisher=Black Swan |year=1999 |page=357 |isbn=0-552-99545-2 }} But the labour elite of which Navon was one, would in the future dictate the Left's agenda. Navon served as deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the Knesset Committee on Foreign and Defense Affairs.
President of Israel (1978–83)
On 19 April 1978, Navon was elected by the Knesset to serve as the fifth President of Israel. The race was uncontested and Navon received 86 votes in the 120-member Knesset with 23 members casting blank votes. He assumed office on 29 May 1978 and was the first president with small children to move into Beit HaNassi, the presidential residence in Jerusalem. His wife, Ofira, was active in promoting the welfare of Israeli children.
As a president, Navon met with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and was influential in the peace talks. According to Haaretz newspaper, he achieved more in one visit than five by Israel's Prime Minister.
Although the Israeli presidency is a ceremonial office, Navon was an outspoken advocate of a judicial commission of inquiry to probe Israel's role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre perpetrated by Lebanese Falangists in 1982.
Minister of education
In 1983, Navon turned down the opportunity to run for a second term of office. Instead he returned to politics, the only Israeli ex-president to do so. When the polls showed that Navon was more popular than Labor chairman Shimon Peres, Peres was pressured to step aside and allow Navon to take over the party leadership. Navon's fluency in the Arabic language made him especially popular among Arab and Mizrahi voters. But Navon did not accept the chairmanship. In 1984, he was elected to the Knesset and served as minister of education and culture from 1984 to 1990. Navon was Minister of Education during the first Intifada. During the summer of 1989 there were riots and protests. Jerusalem parents appealed to Navon by petition, to reopen their schools. Navon a socialistic Jew was impressed by the legal implications: "This action is immoral and ineffective and will cause irreversible damage in the long and short run to Palestinian children and to our own." As the violence escalated moderates suffered at the hands of extremists.{{harvp|Gilbert|1999|pp=539–40}}
Remaining in the Knesset until 1992, he briefly left politics. Navon emerged from retirement to chair a Commission of Inquiry on Israeli medical authorities' controversial practice of discarding blood donated by Israelis of Ethiopian origin due to concerns about AIDS transmission.{{cite news|last1=Sternoff|first1=Daniel|title=Ethiopian Jews angered over blood dumping probe|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19960729&id=kKRSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=m28DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2597,8712156|access-date=8 November 2015|work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|date=29 July 1996}}
Literary career
File:The funeral of Yitzhak Navon (2).jpg
Navon wrote two musicals based on Sephardic folklore: Romancero Sefardi (1968) and Bustan Sefardi ("Sephardic Garden" 1970), which were successfully performed at Habimah, Israel's national theater in Tel Aviv.
He is also the author of The Six Days and the Seven Gates (1979), a modern legend of the reunification of Jerusalem, first published in Hebrew by Shikmona Publishing Company and later translated into English.
Awards and recognition
In 2003, the Spanish government granted Navon an award at Herzliya.
The Jerusalem - Yitzchak Navon Station in central Jerusalem, Israel, is named after Navon and honors his history in the country.{{Cite web | title=Jerusalem - Yitzchak Navon | url=https://www.rail.co.il/en/stations/jerusalem-yitzchak-navon | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181003181657/https://www.rail.co.il/en/stations/jerusalem-yitzchak-navon | access-date=2025-05-15 | archive-date=2018-10-03}}
Shortly before his death, he was placed honorary last 120th spot on the Zionist Union list on 2015 Israeli legislative election.
References
{{Reflist}}
Bibliography
- {{cite book|first=Michael|last= Bar-Zohar|title= Ben-Gurion|publisher= Weidenfeld & Nicolson|place= London|date=1978}}
- {{cite book|first=Amos|last= Elon|title= The Israelis, Founders and Sons|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|place=London|date= 1971}}
- {{cite book|first=Yaacov|last= Shimoni|title=Biographical Dictionary of the Middle East|publisher=Facts of the File, the Jerusalem Publishing House|location= New York, Oxford, Sydney|date=1991}}
- {{cite book|first=Shlomo|last= Zemach|title=An Introduction to the History of Labour Settlement in Palestine, Zionist Library|place= Tel Aviv|date=1945}}
- {{cite book|first=Ronald W.|last= Zweig|title= David Ben-Gurion, Politics and Leadership in Israel|publisher= Frank Cass|location=London, and Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem|date=1991}}
External links
{{commons category}}
- [http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts%20About%20Israel/State/Yitzhak%20Navon Yitzhak Navon] Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- [https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/navon-yitzhak Yitzhak Navon] by Susan Hattis Rolef, from Encyclopaedia Judaica via encyclopedia.com
- {{MKlink|id=687}}
- [http://mooma.keshet-tv.com/Discs.asp?ArtistId=12381 Some songs with lyrics and/or music by Yitzhak Navon]{{Dead link|date=February 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} {{in lang|he}}
- [http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.684680 An obituary in Israeli newspaper Haaretz]
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{{Chairmen of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee}}
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Category:20th-century Sephardi Jews
Category:21st-century Sephardi Jews
Category:20th-century Israeli Jews
Category:21st-century Israeli Jews
Category:Israeli Sephardi Jews
Category:Alignment (Israel) politicians
Category:Rafi (political party) politicians
Category:Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni
Category:Israeli male dramatists and playwrights
Category:Israeli people of Moroccan-Jewish descent
Category:Israeli people of Turkish-Jewish descent
Category:Jewish Israeli dramatists and playwrights
Category:Jewish Israeli politicians
Category:Members of the 6th Knesset (1965–1969)
Category:Members of the 7th Knesset (1969–1974)
Category:Members of the 8th Knesset (1974–1977)
Category:Members of the 9th Knesset (1977–1981)
Category:Members of the 11th Knesset (1984–1988)
Category:Members of the 12th Knesset (1988–1992)
Category:Ministers of education of Israel
Category:Politicians from Jerusalem
Category:Judaeo-Spanish-language writers