Eri Jabotinsky

ויקיפדיה

אתר הכנסת

Ari Jabotinsky

Ari Jabotinsky (Hebrew: ערי ז'בוטינסקי‎, also transliterated Eri, born 1910, died 6 June 1969) was a Revisionist Zionist activist, Israeli politician and academic. He was the son of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the opposition movement within Zionism at the time, and later served in the Knesset between 1949 and 1951, as a member of the opposition Herut party of Menachem Begin. Following his break with the party, he pursued his academic career.

Biography

Born in Odessa, the Jabotinsky family made aliyah to Mandate Palestine in 1919. Following the arrest of his father the following year, he left the country and moved to France, where he attended high school in Paris, and later earned a degree in electrical engineering. Between 1933 and 1935 he worked as an engineer in an aircraft factory. In 1935 he returned to Palestine, and worked as an engineer at the Naharayim power station in the Jordan Valley.

A long-term member of Revisionism's Betar youth movement, he became one of its representative leaders in 1936, and joined its worldwide board two years later. With Betar and the party's military wing, Irgun, he helped coordinate illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine; he was temporarily arrested by the British authorities in 1940, and upon his release he moved to the United States, where his father died suddenly about the same time. There, together with Hillel Kook's 'Bergsen Boys', Aryeh Ben-Eliezer, Shmuel Merlin and Yitzhak Ben-Ami, they founded the Emergency Committee to Save European Jewry, among others. He briefly returned to Palestine, but was again arrested by the British and expelled for illegal activities in 1944.

Following Israel's independence, he returned in 1948, and was elected to the first Knesset the following year, as a member of the Herut party's list of candidates. On 20 February 1951 however, Jabotinsky and Hillel Kook left Herut, and sat as independents for the rest of the term, although the move was not recognised by the house committee; this followed on-going disagreements over the party’s direction and its new leadership by Menachem Begin.

After leaving the Knesset, he was awarded a PhD in mathematics in 1957 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also lectured on electricity theory at the Technion between 1955 and his death in 1969.

Education: High School in Paris; Electrical Engineering degree from Ecole Centrale (1933); PhD in Mathematics from Hebrew University (1957).

Knesset Terms: Knesset 1, from 14.2.1949 - 20.8.1951.

Public Activities:

• Active in Betar Movement in his youth
• In 1920 left pre-State Israel with his parents and lived in France
• Engineer in French Aircraft factory, 1933-1935
• Participated in Betar Trainers Course in Czechoslovakia (1934)
• Returned to pre-State Israel in 1935 and worked as an Engineer in Naharaim
• Representative of Betar in pre-State Israel form 1936
• Member of the World Board of Betar from 1938
• Active in illegal immigration
• Arrested by British in 1940
• Upon his release departed for United States and was active in establishing a Jewish Army
• One of founders of Emergency Committee to Save European Jewry
• Arrested by British and expelled from country in 1944
• Returned after establishment of the State of Israel
• Active in support of Marronites and other minorities in the Arab World
• Member of Knesset for Herut
• In the closing stages of the First Knesset he resigned from the Herut Faction
• Lecturer at Technion on Electricity Theory, 1955-1969

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Jabotinsky