Moshe Arens

Moshe Arens (1999)

Moshe Arens ( Hebrew משה ארנס; born on December 27, 1925 in Kaunas , Lithuania ; died January 7, 2019 in Savjon , Israel ) was an Israeli politician and flight engineer. He was a member of Likud , three times Israeli defense minister and from 1988 to 1990 Israeli foreign minister . Arens later served as chairman of the International Board of Governors of Ariel University Center in Samaria .

Life

Arens' mother was a dentist and his father was a businessman. In 1939 he emigrated with his family to the USA and became an American citizen. Arens went to school in New York and received his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . From 1944 to 1946 he served in an engineering corps in the US armed forces during World War II. In 1948, when Israel gained independence and asserted itself in the Palestinian War against the Arabs, Arens immigrated to Israel and became a member of the Irgun units led by Menachem Begin . From 1948 to 1949 he was also the Irgun's North Africa envoy. He was associated with Begin throughout his political career.

After the war he lived in the moshav Schitufi Mevo Beitar, but returned in 1951 to the United States, where he in 1953 at Qian Xuesen master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the California Institute of Technology made. From 1962 to 1971 he was the deputy general director of the Israeli aviation industry. After entering politics and being elected to the Knesset for Likud in 1974, he became chairman of the Foreign and Defense Committee.

In 1982, Arens von Begin was appointed ambassador to the United States . He moved from this post in 1983 to the Ministry of Defense, where he replaced Ariel Sharon as Minister. In 1984 he became a minister without jurisdiction in the Government of National Unity. In December 1988 he became foreign minister in the cabinet of Yitzhak Shamir . He held this post until June 1990, when he was again appointed Minister of Defense by Shamir. In this capacity he acted until 1992, when the Likud lost the elections.

Arens then retired from politics until 1999. That year he challenged his protégé Benjamin Netanyahu in the Likud leadership. Although he received only 18 percent of the vote, Netanyahu appointed him to the cabinet as defense minister in January 1999, replacing Yitzhak Mordechai . When Likud lost the 1999 election, Arens withdrew from politics.

Arens was seen as a hardliner with regard to Palestinian-Israeli relations, he was also in the inner-party opposition to Sharon’s disengagement plan and tried to convince the Likud members of his position. As a former associate professor of aeronautical engineering at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), he has written a number of articles on propulsion and flight mechanics. Arens was married with four children and spoke English, French and German.

In retirement, Arens devoted himself primarily to researching and remembering the history of the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW). This was active as a revisionist-Zionist underground movement on the side of the better-known Jewish fighting organization ŻOB in the Warsaw ghetto uprising . Arens was the author of a number of articles on this uprising, as well as the book Flags over the Ghetto , which has been published in Hebrew, Polish and English. Historians who are familiar with the matter, especially the Polish-Israeli research group around Dariusz Libionka and Laurence Weinbaum, have questioned Arens' results and the methodology of his research.

Web links

Commons : Moshe Arens  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ofer Aderet: Moshe Arens, Former Israeli Defense Minister and Liberal Likud Veteran, Dies at 93 . January 7, 2019.
2. ↑ Isabel Kershner: Moshe Arens, Israeli Statesman and Ex-Defense Minister, Dies at 93 . January 7, 2019.
3. ↑ Quick Facts About The Ariel University Center of Samaria .  ( 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.  
4. ^ David K. Shipler, Special To the New York Times: Man in the News; Israeli Hawk Is New Envoy . February 12, 1982.
5. ^ Executive Commitees .
6. ↑ Grapevine: A three-letter word - Opinion - Jerusalem Post .
7. ↑ Book Reviews (PDF; 99 kB)