Mattityahu Peled

Mattityahu "Matti" Peled ( Hebrew מתתיהו "מתי" פלד; born on July 20, 1923 as Mattityahu Ifland in Haifa , British Mandate Palestine ; died March 10, 1995 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli politician , general and the founder of the Chair of Arabic Studies at Tel Aviv University . Peled held important command functions in the Israeli army (IDF) during the three Middle East wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967 , especially in 1967 as Quartermaster General and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, he played a decisive role in Israel's historic victory over its Arab neighbors. Since the mid-1970s, Peled has been committed to the dialogue between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians .

Life

Peled grew up in Haifa and Jerusalem and joined the Palmach , the military arm of the Haganah , in 1941 at the age of 18 . Together with Yitzhak Rabin he was a member of the Jerusalem Palmach Unit. After the Second World War, Peled began studying law at the University of London (1946–1947), but returned to Palestine after the outbreak of the War of Independence and fought again in the Haganah, which was transferred to the regular Israeli army in May 1948 ( IDF). Peled was initially company commander and later deputy commander of the legendary Giv'ati Brigade . In Operation Jo'av (October 15-22, 1948), in which areas that were still occupied by Egypt in the final phase of the War of Independence but were conquered by the future Jewish state under the UN partition plan for Palestine , Peled commanded the exit Giv'ati units crucial to the operation and was seriously wounded during the fighting.

After the 1949 armistice, Peled was the military commander of Jerusalem. In the early 1950s he visited with several other IDF commanders, including a. Rabin, staff training courses in Great Britain. After the Suez Crisis in 1956 , he was briefly the responsible military governor of the occupied Gaza Strip until it was evacuated. During this time, according to his own admission, Peled's interest in the language and culture of the Arabs was aroused, which is why he began studying oriental studies in Jerusalem while still active (see below).

From 1963 Peled was an advisor to the Israeli Defense Ministry for armaments and procurement issues (the Deputy Minister of Defense responsible for this area was Shimon Peres at the time ) and from 1964 was named "Quartermaster General", equivalent to the NATO staff officer G3 at General Staff level. Member of the General Staff responsible for supply and logistics (with the rank of major general ("Aluf")) in the critical phase before and during the Six Day War in 1967.

Peled was known for his always spirited and committed demeanor. When the Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol hesitated to strike against Egypt in the decisive meeting of the Israeli Security Cabinet with the General Staff on June 2, 1967 , Major General Peled threatened the generals , supported by the three commanders responsible for the armored divisions planned for use in Sinai against Egypt Ariel Sharon , Avraham Joffe and Israel Tal , with his resignation in order to carry out a pre-emptive strike against the Egyptian army. Eshkol gave in, the desired preemptive strike took place and contributed significantly to the quick victory over the opposing Arab armies.

In 1969 Peled retired from active service, as was customary at the time at the age of 45.

Professor of Arabic Studies

Peled had already started studying oriental studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during his active service from 1961 to 1963 . Shortly after retiring from active service, he received his doctorate from UCLA in 1971 on the Egyptian writer and later Nobel Prize winner Nagib Mahfuz .

After receiving his doctorate, Peled co-founded the Institute for Arabic Literature at Tel Aviv University and was its director for several years.

Peled translated numerous Arabic authors into Hebrew. His last translation of the work "Sages of Darkness" by the Syrian-Kurdish author Salim Barakat, who now lives in Sweden, received the "Translator's Association" award.

Political commitment, member of the Knesset

During this time, Peled began to write political comments in the Israeli daily Maariv and became a member of the Israeli Labor Party, from which he left in 1976. In the following years Peled was involved in various small left parties (1976-77 "Ya'ad" (with Shulamit Aloni and Arje Eliav ), 1977-83 "Sheli" ("Shalom Le Y'israel") with Ran Cohen and Arje Eliav ).

During the Lebanon War in 1982 , Peled's Sheli party (for which Uri Avnery, who was also known in Germany from 1977 to 1981, sat in the Knesset) became part of the ever-growing protest movement against the war (see also Shalom Achschav ("Peace Now")). Cohen (himself Colonel of the Reserve) and Peled argued over whether reservists should refuse military service. Peled publicly supported the calls of the Yesch Gvul movement, Cohen declined. The Sheli party split and Cohen went to the Ratz party (which emerged from Aloni's "Ya'ad" and later merged into today's Meretz-Jachad party).

From 1984 to 1988 Peled was a member of the Knesset for the "Progressive List for Peace", an attempt by a Jewish-Arab political party that finally disappeared from the political scene in 1992, together with the Arab-Israeli civil rights activist Mohammed Miari. During this time, Peled caused a stir as one of the most industrious and productive Knesset MPs, as he not only commented on civil rights issues, but was also able to familiarize himself very thoroughly and constructively with a variety of issues.

In 1988 the PLP lost votes, so that only Mohammed Miari got a mandate. In 1992 the party finally failed because of the newly introduced 1.5% hurdle.

Shortly before his death in 1993, Peled was one of the co-founders of Gush Shalom , along with Uri Avnery.

Pioneer of Oslo

Peled became known as co-founder and chairman of the "Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace" (ICIPP), together with Uri Avnery and other well-known personalities. This group made contact with representatives of the PLO as early as the 1970s, when this was officially illegal and forbidden in Israel, for example Issam Sartawi, who was murdered by radical Palestinians from the Abu Nidal organization at the SI conference in Lisbon in 1983 . Peled always kept confidential the then Prime Minister Rabin (1974-77), with whom he had been friends since the time together in the Palmach. Many years later, these contacts led to official negotiations between the Israeli government and the PLO, which culminated in the so-called Oslo Process in 1993 , which Peled was to experience shortly before his death (he died of liver cancer in 1995 ). He welcomed the fact that his demand for official Israeli contacts with the PLO had finally become a reality, but in his last essay "Requiem to Oslo", shortly after the first agreements were signed, he sharply criticized the "peace process" that he had initiated, which he considered half-hearted because it would neither lead to a functioning Palestinian state nor stop the Israeli settlement policy.

Although from around 1975 onwards Peled was politically active in the extreme left spectrum by Israeli standards, he actively cultivated his network from his active military service until his death and was a respected conversationalist and friend for many leading figures in Israeli politics and society, such as man also the obituaries after his death, for example from his old war comrade and then President Ezer Weizman in 1995 (who had also changed from "hawk" to "dove", albeit not as dramatically as Peled).

Mattityahu Peled was in Kibbutz Nahshon buried in central Israel.

family

Peled left two sons and two daughters. One daughter, Nurit Peled-Elhanan , is a professor of linguistics at the Hebrew University. One son is the political scientist Yoav Peled from Tel Aviv University, who was Hans Speier visiting professor at New York's New School for Social Research from 2010 to 2011 . The Haifa business economics professor Steven Plaut accused him of being "Marxist" and "anti-Israeli". A younger son Miko (born 1961) lives in San Diego. He became known through his first book "The General's Son: An Israeli's Journey in Palestine". On September 4, 1997, the then 13-year-old daughter of Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Smadar Elhanan, was killed in a Hamas suicide attack on the Ben Jehuda pedestrian street in central Jerusalem. For Miko Peled, Smadar's death was the occasion in his first book to deal with the history of his family and the relationship between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and to develop a differentiated understanding of the reasons for the conflict. Since the death of her daughter, Nurit Peled-Elhanan have also been committed to promoting Israeli-Palestinian understanding in the interests of her father. Nurit Peled was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament in 2001 .

Works

• Religion, My Own - The Literary Works of Najib Mahfuz. Transaction Publications, New Brunswick 1983, ISBN 978-0-87855-135-4 (Dissertation, UCLA, 1971)

Web links

• Literature by and about Mattityahu Peled in the catalog of the German National Library
• Photograph of the entire Israeli General Staff with President Zalman Shazar , after the victory in 1967. General Matti Peled stands directly to the right of Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin ( photo )
• Matti Peled : Knesset website
• Matti Peled : CV on the American Friends Service Association ( Quaker ) website
• Joseph Finklestone: Obituary for Matti Peled, Independent, March 16, 1995

Individual evidence

• All information and data not explicitly substantiated come from the biographical entry of Major General a cited above. D. and MK Matti Peled on the Knesset website.

1. ↑ Portrait of Mattityahu Peled. Knesset, accessed August 26, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Ami Gluska: Israel's decision to go to war, June 2, 1967. In: MERIA - Middle East Review of International Affairs. Volume 11, No. 2, June 2007. Online link ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ "Old comrades": DER SPIEGEL 31/1970
4. ↑ CV Matti Peled on the "AFSA" website (USA Quakers, see below)
5. ↑ Uri Avnery: My friend, the enemy: Dietz Verlag. Preface by Bruno Kreisky , 416 pages, ISBN 3-8012-0130-9
6. ↑ Quote: "President Ezer Weizman called Peled" one of the most outstanding and interesting figures of the 1948 generation. He was intelligent, wise, and a good friend. No doubt that we are talking about the end of a generation. 'Matti knew how to pound on the table when it was time to go to war, like on the eve of the Six Day War, and he strongly voiced the need to make peace when he thought it was possible,' Weizman said. The president said he hopes Peled will be remembered as a fighter, academician, and a peacemaker. (Alon Pinkas: Matti Peled dies at 72, The Jerusalem Post, March 12, 1995 online ( Memento of the original from September 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) 
7. ^ Curriculum Vitae Yoav Peled. Academia.edu, accessed June 10, 2019 . 
8. ^ Steven Plaut: Anti-Israel Marxist Jews at Tel Aviv University: Frontpage Magazine, February 24, 2011
9. ↑ Miko Peled: The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine . Schwabe AG, Zurich 2017, ISBN 3-85990-291-1 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
10. ↑ Miko Peled: A General's Son, Just World Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1-935982-15-9
11. ↑ "The General's Son" - Miko Peled website
12. ↑ Barbara Demick: Poster Child Of Peace Is Terror Victim Once The Face Of Hope, She Now Symbolizes Israel's Frustrated Future. Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep 14, 1997 ( online )
13. ↑ Miko Peled: The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine . Schwabe AG, Zurich 2017, ISBN 3-85990-291-1 , introduction.
14. ↑ 1999-2009 Laureate Sakharov Prize. European Parliament, accessed June 10, 2019 .