Yitzhak Navon

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Navon is a plurilingual descendant of a Mizrahi-Jewish-Palestinian family of rabbis, but secular himself. He studied Hebrew literature and islamic culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After his voluntary service for the Hagana in Jerusalem, he became an Israeli diplomat in Uruguay and Argentina.

In 1951, he became the political secretary of the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and a year later the bureau chief of Ben-Gurion. He continued in this position under PM Moshe Sharett. In 1963, he became department head at the Ministry of Education and Culture. Two years later Navon was elected to the Knesset as a member of Ben Gurion's Rafi-list. In 1968, he followed Ben-Gurion to the Israeli Labour Party. He served as deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of its Committee on Foreign and Defense Affairs.

Navon married at a rather late age with young woman, Ofira, who he survived after she died of cancer. In 1978 he was elected as the fifth President of Israel. He was the first president with children at Israeli President House. Ofira was engaged in promoting the well-being of Israeli children. Navon was between the proponents of a judicial research committee into an Israeli connection of the Sabra and Shatila massacre that was perpetrated by the Lebanese Falangists in 1982.

In 1983 he decided not to run for a second term as president. Instead he returned to the political scene, the first Israeli ex-president to make such a move (and in 2006 still the only one). Because he was more popular in the polls than Labor leader Shimon Peres, there was pressure on Peres to allow Navon to lead the list. Navon speaks fluent Arabic and was especially popular among Arab and Mizrahi voters. He however did not openly seek the leadership. In 1984 he was elected to the Knesset, becoming minister of education and culture from 1984 to 1990. He remained in the Knesset until 1992, then left politics.

Navon wrote among others two musicals. The original casts and their remakes, at the Habimah Israeli national theatre in Tel Aviv, were extremely well received.

External links

• [Biography at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
• [Biography at the Jewish Virtual Library]
• [Yitzhak Navon pages at the Knesset]
• () [Some songs with lyrics and/or music by Yitzhak Navon]

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