Levi Eschkol

Levi Eschkol 1963

Levi Eschkol ( Hebrew לוי אשכול, originally Levi Schkolnik ; born on October 25, 1895 in Oratiw , Kyiv Governorate , Russian Empire , today Vinnytsia Oblast , Ukraine ; died on February 26, 1969 in Jerusalem ) was Israel's third prime minister from 1963 until his death .

life and work

Levi Eschkol was born in 1895 in the Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire , into a wealthy religious family. His mother was inclined to Hasidism and his father to the Mitnagdim . As a child he attended a traditional, religious school (so-called cheder ) and later graduated from the Hebrew High School in Vilnius . In 1914, Eshkol went to Palestine , which at that time was still part of the Ottoman Empire . During the First World War he served in the Jewish Legion on the side of the British . After the end of the war, he was a co-founder of Kibbutz Degania B and soon became its treasurer and economic planner. From 1921 he founded and directed numerous facilities within the Histadrut union . During a trip to Europe in 1922 to acquire weapons, he was arrested by the police in Vienna and spent several weeks in custody because he was accused of illegally acquiring weapons . He founded Mekorot , an organization that ensured the water supply to the Jewish settlements, and was its director from 1937 to 1951. In 1934 he was one of the founders of the Ha'avara Agreement for the transfer of Jewish capital from National Socialist Germany to Palestine . In 1940 he became a member of the national command of the Hagana , whose finance department he led and organized activities for illegal arms production. From 1948 to 1963 he headed the Jewish Agency's settlement department .

In 1951 Levi Eschkol was elected to the Knesset for the first time as a member of the Mapai , which he co-founded , and became Minister of Agriculture, and then Minister of Finance in 1952 as the successor to the late Elieser Kaplan . During these years he made a name for himself by implementing the national water system. Critics linked it in the 1950s with the difficulties and failures in accepting immigrants.

In 1960 he was a member of the Cabinet Committee, Pinhas Lavon of responsibility in the Lavon Affair relieved, but several months later he supported Lawons dismissal from his post as general secretary of the Histadrut and tried in the following years, the crisis with David Ben Gurion as to be resolved amicably as possible. When Ben Gurion finally had to resign as Israeli prime minister in 1963 , Eshkol was elected as his successor as prime minister and defense minister and refused, despite pressure from Ben Gurion, to pursue the Lawon affair. At the invitation of US President Lyndon B. Johnson , Eshkol was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit the United States , whereupon the US began to sell significant quantities of arms to Israel, although France remained Israel's most important arms supplier until the Six Day War . Under Eschkol's leadership, Israel first made diplomatic contact with the Federal Republic of Germany in 1965 . He initiated cultural contacts with the Soviet Union and thus made the emigration of some Jewish Soviet citizens possible. From 1963 to 1967, meanwhile also Defense Minister, he invited Ben Gurion's party Rafi and Menachem Begin's party Gachal to join a "government of national unity" during the crisis in the Six Day War . He left the field to representatives of a tougher line like Begin and Moshe Dajan , although he would have preferred Jigal Allon in his place .

After the end of the Six Day War, Eschkol was in charge of founding Awoda , the Israeli labor party that emerged from the merger of Mapai, Achdut Haawoda / Poale Zion and Rafi. The Labor Party was founded in January 1968. Eschkol was its chairman until his sudden death in February 1969 from a heart attack .

• Levi Eshkol
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  Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury and Levi Eshkol , 1958

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  Shimon Peres and Levi Eshkol

Web links

Commons : Levi Eschkol  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Levi Eschkol in the catalog of the German National Library
• Levi Eschkol in the Jewish Virtual Library (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Tom Segev: 1967, Israel's second birth. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 110 ff.