Avi Primor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Avi Primor (2010 in Frankfurt am Main)

Avraham "Avi" Primor (born April 8, 1935 in Tel Aviv ) is an Israeli diplomat and publicist . He was the Israeli ambassador to Germany from 1993 to 1999 and during this time he became known to the German public as one of the most important voices in the German-Israeli dialogue. Primor is the chairman of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations .

Life

Early years

His mother Selma Goldstein, a trained teacher, emigrated from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv in Palestine in 1932 ; her family was murdered during the Holocaust . His father, the son of Dutch immigrants, had learned the profession of diamond cutter in the Netherlands and ran a diamond cutting shop in Palestine.

Primor studied political science and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1952 to 1955 . From 1955 to 1957 Primor did his military service (he was wounded as a tank soldier during the Suez Crisis ), after which he studied further at City College New York ( Master's degree in International Relations 1959) and at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Diplomatic service

In 1961 he joined the Israeli diplomatic service . After various activities in the Jerusalem Foreign Ministry , he was soon sent to diplomatic posts in several African countries. As embassy secretary in the Ivory Coast , Primor had what he describes as a formative encounter with "his first German", Claus von Amsberg , who worked at the German embassy there and who later married Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

At the age of 27 he was then transferred to Dahomey, today's Benin, as the youngest ambassador ever sent by Israel . In 1965 he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as director of the Scandinavian Affairs Department. In 1970 he became the ambassador of Israel to France .

In 1973 Primor was the spokesman for the Israeli delegation at the Geneva Peace Conference, which brought representatives from Israel and Arab states to one table for the first time after the Yom Kippur War .

From 1975 he held various high posts in the Jerusalem ministerial bureaucracy: first he was spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and director of the press department. From 1977 he headed the International Organizations Department. In 1980 Primor became Director of the Africa Department and, in 1984, Deputy State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry.

From 1987 on, he was also in Brussels Ambassador of Israel to the European Community , in Belgium and in Luxembourg .

In 1991 he took a leave of absence from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to become Vice President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. With the aim of promoting the exchange between Israel and Europe, he founded the Institute for European Studies there , which was renamed the Helmut Kohl Institute in 1995 .

In November 1993, at the suggestion of Shimon Peres , Primor became Israel's ambassador in Bonn .

During his time as ambassador, he was very present in the German public through numerous lectures and appearances on talk shows (much more than his predecessors and successors, or his colleagues from other countries). He became one of the most important voices in the German-Israeli dialogue.

In 1997 he published the book "... with the exception of Germany", in which he dealt with the problematic relations between Israel and Germany on the basis of many personal memories and experiences. It was the first book that an incumbent ambassador had ever written about his German host country, and it frankly quoted details from discussions, some of which had only recently taken place, with politicians who were still in office. Primor wrote it in German.

Primor received much praise for the open and winning manner in which he campaigned for reconciliation between Germans and Israelis and for the interests of Israel. He has received several European prizes, including the 1998 European Culture Prize , the Merite Européen in Gold and in 2003 the Federal Cross of Merit with a star and shoulder ribbon .

One of the successes of his term in office is that the European Council decided in 1994 to give Israel a privileged status in its economic relations with the EU (comparable to that of Switzerland), which was largely thanks to the advocacy of Chancellor Helmut Kohl .

Criticism of one's own government

Relations between the two countries were strained by an incident in February 1999, when Israeli security officers killed four Kurdish demonstrators who had tried to force their way into the Israeli consulate general in Berlin. As ambassador, Primor represented the official Israeli version that this was done in self-defense . Later, as a private citizen, he moved away from it.

Even during his tenure, he publicly criticized his own government several times. In 1996 he contradicted the Israeli President Ezer Weizman on a television program , who on a state visit had declared in view of the increasing numbers of Jewish immigrants to Germany that it was not right for any Jew to live in Germany.

During the Israeli parliamentary election campaign in 1999, in an interview with DIE WELT, he described the ultra-orthodox Shas party (and other religious parties in Israel) as undemocratic because they were based "on divine law and the words of the rabbis " rather than on parliamentary or democratic principles. Because of this statement he was summoned to Jerusalem by then Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon and reprimanded. Six months later, after the Netanyahu- Sharon government was voted out of office, under the government of Ehud Barak (Labor Party), Primor retired due to old age.

After the civil service

Primor returned to Israel, resigned from the diplomatic service, and became Vice President of Tel Aviv University . In 2004 he founded the trilateral center for European studies at the private university Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya . Since 2013 the project (which cooperates with universities in Jordan and East Jerusalem) has been based at Tel Aviv University. Primor is also a member of the University Council of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the Advisory Board of the Atlantic Initiative .

In addition, Primor has been chairman of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations since the death of David Kimche in 2010. In December 2012 he received the Peace Prize of the Geschwister-Korn-und-Gerstenmann-Stiftung in Frankfurt am Main .

Private

Primor is married for the second time and has three children - adult twins, one of whom is a journalist for the newspaper Haaretz , and a son who, in 1997, was the first Israeli diplomatic child to attend a primary school in Bonn. In addition to his native Hebrew, Primor speaks fluent German, French and English and is an enthusiastic rider. He is a member of the Club of Rome .

Prizes and awards

Fonts

Autograph

Web links

Commons : Avi Primor  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About the association ( Memento from November 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ German understanders and German favorite Israeli in FAZ of December 10, 2012, page 32
  3. ↑ Award of the State Order of Merit on March 7, 2011. In: Press release. State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia, April 7, 2011, archived from the original on November 18, 2016 ; accessed on March 11, 2017 .
  4. ^ Avi Primor, the former ambassador of Israel in Germany, is the 10th recipient of the Dolf Sternberger Prize
  5. ↑ This pass is valid for the following countries: All countries "with the exception of Germany". This endorsement was stamped (in French and Hebrew) on the passports of the young state of Israel
personal data
SURNAME Primor, Avi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Primor, Avraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli diplomat and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Tel Aviv