JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ELIAV, ARIE LOVA (1921– ), Israeli planner, educator, sociologist,
politician, and peace activist, member of the Sixth to
Ninth and Twelfth Knessets. Eliav was born in Moscow and
was brought by his parents to Palestine in 1924. He studied at
the Herzlia Gymnasium in Tel Aviv and general history and
sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He joined the
Haganah in 1936 and in the years 1941–45 fought in the British
army in the Middle East and Europe. In 1946–48 he was
active in the organization of “illegal”*immigration to Palestine.
After the establishment of the state he joined the IDF and
participated in the War of Independence, reaching the rank
of lieutenant colonel. In 1949–53 he served as assistant to the
director of the Jewish Agency Settlement Department, and
studied agricultural economics in London in 1953. In 1955–57
Eliav directed the project for the development of the Lachish
region in southern Israel, where many new immigrants were
settled; he participated in the planning and establishment of
the town of Arad. During the Sinai Campaign in 1956 he was
in charge of the project for saving the Jews of Port Said.
In 1958–60, Eliav served as first secretary in the Israeli
Embassy in Moscow. In 1960–64 he headed the aid and rehabilitation
mission that Israel sent to Qazvin in northwestern
Iran after it had been severely hit by an earthquake. Eliav was
first elected to the Sixth Knesset in 1965 on the Alignment list.
In 1966–67 he served as deputy minister of industry and trade
in charge of industrialization in development areas, and the
following two years as deputy minister of immigration absorption
under Yigal *Allon. In 1969–71 Eliav served as secretary
general of the *Israel Labor Party. In this period he started to
adopt dovish positions regarding the concessions that Israel
might make in return for peace with its neighbors. After resigning
the secretary generalship of the Labor Party, he spent
the next year writing an ideological work entitled Ereẓ ha-Ẓevi
(one of the biblical names for the Land of Israel) in which an
entire chapter was devoted to a discussion of Israel’s relations
with the Arabs and Palestinians. It appeared in English in 1974
as Land of the Hart.
Following the earthquake that occurred in Managua in
Nicaragua just before Christmas of 1972 Eliav headed an Israeli
aid mission to help construct temporary housing there. In December
1973 he ran in the elections to the Eighth Knesset on
the Alignment list, but in April 1975 left the Alignment and
joined the Civil Rights Movement, forming a parliamentary
group by the name of Ya’ad. In 1975 he was also one of the
founders of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.
In January 1976 he and MK Marsha Freedman left Ya’ad, due
to a dispute about policy toward the PLO and formed the Social
Democratic parliamentary faction. In 1976–77 Eliav participated
in talks with representatives of the PLO.
Eliav was one of the founders of the radical party Maḥaneh
Sheli, and in 1977 was elected to the Ninth Knesset on its
list. In 1979 he handed his seat over to Uri *Avneri and engaged
in teaching new immigrants and prisoners. In 1982–85 he participated,
on behalf of Prime Minister Menaḥem *Begin, in
contacts with the PLO and other Palestinian organizations in
eliav, binyamin
an attempt to bring about the release of four Israeli prisoners
held by them in return for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
In 1982 Eliav joined the International Center for Peace
in the Middle East. In the elections to the Twelfth Knesset in
1988 he returned to the Knesset on the Alignment list. In 1993
he unsuccessfully ran against Ezer *Weizman for the Labor
Party nomination for the presidency of Israel.
[Susan Hattis Rolef (2nd ed.)]
ELIAV (Lubotzky), BINYAMIN (1909–1974), Israeli public
figure and editor. Born in Riga, Latvia, he finished his secondary
education in Haifa. Returning to Europe for his higher
studies, he soon became one of the outstanding figures in the
Betar movement, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, whose personality
profoundly influenced him. From 1932 to 1935, he lived in
Paris where he served as general secretary of Betar. In 1935 he
returned to Palestine, where his political activities against the
policies of the British Mandatory government earned him repeated
terms of imprisonment, principally in the Acre Prison.
In between, he edited the movement’s newspapers Hamashkif
and Hayarden.
In 1938 he was released from Acre due to ill health, on
condition that he leave the country until the termination of
martial law, and was in Riga until 1940. After his return he
championed the cause of conciliation between the Revisionist
movement and the Zionist Organization. A tentative agreement
that was to be the basis of the reconciliation was vetoed
by Ben-Gurion.
Eliav left Betar and formed his own political party, Tenuat
Ha’am, and edited its daily newspaper, Mivrak. This small
party attracted a wide variety of supporters. In June 1947 Eliav
was again arrested, and placed in a detention camp in Latrun
together with other leading figures of the yishuv.
After the establishment of the State of Israel he underwent
a certain metamorphosis. He disbanded his party and
never again played an active political role. He worked as a
journalist, editor, and translator (editing the Labor Party’s
afternoon daily Ha-Dor, and translating Isaac Deutscher’s
biography of Stalin). From 1953 he was in the Israel Foreign
Ministry, serving in South America and later as consul-general
in New York.
Gradually he devoted himself exclusively to the cause
of Soviet Jewry, which in the mid- to late-1950s, was a tabula
rasa. To Eliav the fate of this last great Jewish community to
survive in Europe was crucial to the future of the Jewish people.
At the same time, he saw it as a universal human problem
of minority rights.
For the next 12 years he traveled all over the world and
established a veritable network of influential connections. He
won the support of outstanding personalities such as Bertrand
Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aya de la Torre of Peru, and Senator
Terracini of Italy.
After retiring from the Foreign Ministry, he served for a
while as Prime Minister Eshkol’s adviser on information and
as acting chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation. From
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 321