Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett (born Moshe Shertok, October 15, 1894 – July 7, 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel (1953-1955), serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.
Born in Kherson, Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire, Moshe Sharett emigrated to Palestine in 1908. His family was one of the founders of Tel Aviv.
Fluent in Arabic, he was employed as an official within the nascent Histadrut labor union. From 1933 to 1948, he guided negotiations between the Zionist movement and the British Mandate of Palestine, which led to the creation of the State of Israel.
Sharret's sister Rivka, Dov Hoz's wife, died in a car crash in December of 1940 while driving to an Aviron board meeting. Also killed were Sharret's other sister, Tzvia Sharett, daughter, Tirza Hoz, and Hoz's business partner, Yitzhak Ben Yaacov.
Due to this experience, Moshe Sharett became the first Foreign Minister of Israel. His pivotal achievement was the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended official hostilities between Israel and the Arab states during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Sharett became Prime Minister following the retirement of Ben-Gurion. Considered to be a moderate, he advocated diplomacy with neighboring states, but was quickly displaced again by Ben-Gurion.
Moshe Sharett served as Foreign Minister (1956), and then became the Chairman of the Jewish Agency until 1960.
In his book "Perfidy", Ben Hecht, claimed that Sharret purposely prevented Joel Brand, a member of the Jewish Agency's rescue commission, from saving an immediate 100,000 Hungarian Jews from certain annihilation. Hecht's claims, however, are not supported by documentation and are not regarded as serious by historians studying this period. Hecht himself was a supporter of the Irgun and of the Israeli Revisionists, and a vocal opponent of Weitzmann, Sharret and Ben-Gurion, and had therefore some political motivation in publishing these claims.
Bibliography
Livia Rokach: Israel's Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary and Other Documents (Belmont, Massachusetts: Association of Arab American University Graduates, 1980; Third Edition 1986), ISBN 0-937694-70-3.
External links
- Moshe Sharett (Jewish Virtual Library)
- Moshe Sharett Israel statesman and Zionist leader (Jewish Agency for Israel)
- Moshe Sharett First foreign minister 1948-1956 and prime minister of Israel 1954-1955 (Israel Ministry of Foreign affairs)
- Moshe Sharett A brief biography and quotes (PalestineRemembered.com)
- Israel's sacred terrorism (online version of Livia Rokach's book)
- Livia Rokach. A study based on Moshe Sharett's diary, Foreword by Noam Chomsky, 1980.
| Preceded by: David Ben-Gurion | Prime Minister of Israel 1953–1955 | Succeeded by: David Ben-Gurion |
| Preceded by: David Ben-Gurion | Leader of the Mapai Party 1954–1955 | Succeeded by: David Ben-Gurion |
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