Mordechai Gur

Mordechai Gur

Mordechai "Motta" Gur ( Hebrew מרדכי "מוטה" גור* May 6, 1930 in Jerusalem ; † July 16, 1995 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli lieutenant general ( Rav-Aluf ) and a politician of the Labor Party ( Avoda ). Between 1974 and 1978 he was the 10th Chief of Staff of the armed forces , later for several years a member of the Knesset and at times a minister.

Life

Military career and promotion to chief of staff

Gur joined the Zionist paramilitary underground organization Hagana as a youth and served in the Negev Brigade between November 1947 and May 1948 during the Palestine War . After serving as a company commander in the Nachal for two years and leading various military operations as a paratrooper , he was wounded in 1955 during a military operation in Chan Yunis . During the Suez Crisis in 1956 he was head of a paratrooper company and then in 1957 deputy commander of the Israeli paratrooper brigade . After attending the Saint-Cyr Military School between 1959 and 1960, he was appointed commander of the Golani Brigade in 1961 and was then head of the Armed Forces Operations Department between 1963 and 1965.

Gur, who also studied Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , was then head of the commanding and headquarters school from 1965 to 1966 and then commander of the paratrooper reserve brigade. During the Six Day War in June 1967 he was in command of the unit that captured Jerusalem's Old City . In the following years he was the commander of the armed forces in the Gaza Strip and in the area of ​​the northern Sinai Peninsula .

In 1969 Gur was promoted to major general ( Aluf ) and as such, as the successor to David Elazar, commander of the north command . After he was a military attaché at the embassy in the USA between 1972 and 1973 , he was again commander of the north command in January 1974 after the Yom Kippur War as the successor to his own successor Yitzchak Chofi .

On April 14, 1974, Motta Gur was promoted to Lieutenant General ( Rav-Aluf ) and as the successor to Lieutenant General David Elazar Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and held this position until he was replaced by Lieutenant General Rafael Eitan on April 1, 1978,

Economic manager and political career

After retiring from active military service, Gur, who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1979 , became director of the public company Koor Industries and worked there until 1984.

In the Knesset election on July 20, 1981, Gur was elected member of the Knesset for the first time, where he represented the interests of the Workers' Party ( Avoda ) until his suicide on July 16, 1995 . During this time he was a member of various committees such as the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense, Immigration and Integration, and State Control.

On September 13, 1984, Prime Minister Shimon Peres appointed him to succeed Eliezer Shostak as Minister of Health in the 21st government. He resigned from this ministerial office on October 20, 1986 with the end of Peres' term of office, because he did not want to hold a ministerial office under his successor Yitzchak Shamir of Likud . Shoschana Arbeli-Almoslino was succeeded as Minister of Health .

After his resignation, he became chairman of the board of the Solel Boneh public construction company. However, he finally entered the 22nd government formed by Shamir as a minister without portfolio on April 18, 1988 and held this office in the subsequent government formed under Shamir until March 15, 1990. During this time he met repeatedly with representatives of the Palestinians , but was ultimately disappointed in 1989 about their demand for a compulsory solution to the Palestinian refugee problem with Israel.

In 1990 Gur originally intended to run for the office of chairman of the Labor Party against Peres, but ultimately withdrew this intention due to illness and thereupon supported Yitzchak Rabin , who won the chairman election against Shimon Peres. After Rabin became Prime Minister for the second time on July 14, 1992 as successor to Yitzchak Shamir, Gur was appointed by him on August 4, 1992 as Deputy Minister of Defense in the 25th government of Israel. In this capacity he also worked in a liaison group between the government and settlers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank . On July 16, 1995, Gur committed suicide because of his deteriorating health.

author

From the late 1960s, Gur wrote a series of children's books, the protagonist of which is the German shepherd "Azit" (Hebrew "The Brave"). The books were filmed in Israel .

Publications

• Azit the Parashooting Dog (1969)
• Azit in the Palaces of Cairo (1970)
• Azit in Judean Desert (1970)
• "The Temple Mount is in our Hands!" (1974)
• Company D: The Story of a Partaroopers Unit (1982)
• Azit in Entebbe (1995)
• From North and Overseas: Service in the Northern Command and United States (posthumous, 1998)

Background literature

• Ofer Zvi (Ed.): Chief of Staff Motta Gur (1998)

Web links

• Mordechai Gur on the Knesset website (accessed December 20, 2012)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary in the Los Angeles Times , accessed December 22, 2012
2. ↑ New magazine "Jalta" - Jewish, different, unusual . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . April 14, 2017 ( deutschlandfunkkultur.de [accessed April 4, 2018]).

predecessor	Office	successor
David Elazar	Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces 1974–1978	Rafael Eitan