Ja'akov Shimshon Shapira

Ja'akov Shimshon Shapira (1951)

Ja'akov Shimshon Shapira ( Hebrew יעקב שמשון שפירא, Born November 4, 1902 in Kirowohrad , Ukraine ; † November 14, 1993 ) was an Israeli politician and Minister of Justice .

Life

After training in a Talmud school ( Yeshiva ), he began studying medicine at the University of Kharkiv . During this time he was already an active member of the Zionist - socialist movement in the Soviet Union from 1923 . In 1924 he moved to the under League of Nations mandate standing Palestine and began studying at the Jerusalem Law School, he with the admission as a lawyer graduated. Despite this college education, he joined a workers' group in Petach Tikwa , where in 1925 he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Giwat Hashlosha , where he worked on an orchard . Shortly afterwards, he became secretary of the United Workers' Party (Ahdut HaAvoda) in Jerusalem , which was chaired by David Ben-Gurion . In 1934 he settled in Haifa and worked there as a lawyer. He was also a representative of the Zionist paramilitary underground organization Hagana in the mandate area.

After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he first became Director General of the Ministry of Justice, but soon afterwards he became Israel's first Attorney General in 1948. He held this office until 1950 and was then replaced by Chaim Cohn , who had previously been his successor as General Director of the Ministry of Justice.

He began his political career on August 20, 1951, when he was elected member of the Knesset , which represented the interests of the Workers' Party (Mapai) until November 14, 1955 . On January 12, 1966, he was appointed Minister of Justice by Prime Minister Levi Eschkol and held this office until June 13, 1972 under his successor Golda Meir, even after Eschkol's death . In this position, he spoke in the cabinet against the annexation of East Jerusalem after the Six Day War . In a decision in early 1969 , Israel's Supreme Court underlined the "temporary character" of the settlements that were already established at the time and declared that it was not a violation of international law. But at the same time Schapira brought the formula into play that the Israeli armed forces had "freed considerable parts of the land of Israel from the foreign yoke" and that "the legal conception of the state of Israel is always based on the principle that the law, the judiciary and the administration of the State of Israel is applied in all those parts of the country that are in fact under the control of the state ”. On November 17, 1969, he was re-elected a member of the Knesset, this time for an electoral term until January 21, 1974.

On September 12, 1972, Prime Minister Meir reappointed him as Minister of Justice, without a successor having been appointed since June 13, 1972. On November 1, 1973, he resigned from the office of Minister of Justice without an official successor being appointed, but instead the office was provisionally administered by the Prime Minister as before. The reason for his resignation was that the dismissal of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan after the Yom Kippur War was rejected by Golda Meir.

Web links

• Biographical information on the Knesset homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ * Shlomo Erel: New Roots: 50 Years of Immigration of German-speaking Jews in Israel Bleicher Verlag, 1983, p. 152. [1]
2. ↑ Legal adjudicator, public adviser .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. HAIRETZ  
3. ^ Gershom Gorenberg: The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 . 2007, ISBN 0-8050-8241-7 , p. 51
4. ↑ A Tragedy Foretold: Israel's Unheeded Prophet . ISRAEL NEWS, June 2007
5. ↑ Reiner Bernstein: Hebron is everywhere, Tel Aviv is everywhere. Necessary remarks on the hearing on the Israeli 'security fence' in The Hague .
6. ^ Gershom Gorenberg: Occupied Territories: The Untold Story of Israel's Settlements . 2007, ISBN 1-84511-430-2 , p. 191