Aryeh Eldad

Aryeh Eldad (Template:Langx; born 1 May 1950) is an Israeli physician, politician and former medical officer.

Born in Tel Aviv, Eldad is a professor of medicine, and was head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Hadassah Medical Center. He was a member of the Knesset from 2003 to 2013 for the National Union, and from 2012 for Otzma LeYisrael, which he co-founded. He was formerly a chief medical officer, and the senior commander of the Israeli Defense Forces medical corps.

Biography

Eldad was born in Tel Aviv on 1 May 1950. As a child, he was a voice actor in radio plays for Israeli state radio.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He is married, with five children. His father, Israel Eldad, was a well-known Israeli public thinker, and formerly one of the leaders of the militant underground group Lehi.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Aryeh Eldad is a resident of the Israeli settlement of Kfar Adumim,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and was a Brigadier-General (reserves) in the Israel Defense Forces.<ref name="haaretz1">Template:Cite news</ref>

Medical career

Eldad studied medicine at Tel Aviv University, where he earned his doctorate.<ref name="jewishpress">Template:Cite news</ref> He served as the chief medical officer, and was the senior commander of the Israeli Defense Forces medical corps for 25 years, and reached a rank of Tat Aluf (Brigadier General).<ref name="jewishpress"/> He won the Evans Award from the American Burns Treatment Association for his treatment of burns.<ref name="jewishstandard">Template:Cite news</ref> Eldad is a professor of medicine, and was head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Hadassah Medical Center hospital in Jerusalem.<ref name="haaretz1"/>

Political career

Eldad was first elected to the Knesset on the National Union list in 2003,<ref name="jewishstandard"/> and chaired the Ethics Committee. Prior to the scheduled Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank in August 2005, Eldad was the only member of parliament to call for non-violent civil disobedience as a tactic in the struggle against the government. Eldad even walked the few hundred kilometres between the now-evacuated community of Sa-Nur (in the northern West Bank) to Neve Dekalim (south Gaza Strip), in order to attract attention to the opposition of the Withdrawal plan.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In the February 2006 dismantlement of the Amona outpost, Eldad was injured during the confrontation between demonstrators and police, as was his ally MK Effi Eitam.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The event caused a storm of criticism on both sides, as interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused them of inciting the crowd to attack the police, while they accused Olmert and the police of reckless use of force.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

After being re-elected in 2006, in August 2007, Eldad established and headed a 10-member Homesh First Knesset caucus met for the first time. The caucus' mandate is to work to promote the re-establishment of Homesh, with the aim of eventually re-establishing all the settlements dismantled in 2005.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In October 2007 he took part in the international counter-jihad conference in Brussels.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He organised a counter-jihad conference himself titled "Facing Jihad" in Jerusalem the following year that included a screening of the film Fitna by Geert Wilders.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In November 2007, he announced the formation of a new secular right-wing party named Hatikva. Ultimately, the party ran as a faction of the National Union in the 2009 elections, with Eldad in third place on the alliance's list. He retained his seat as the Union won four mandates.

In 2008, after Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin submitted a bill to remove the Jewish settlers from Hebron, Eldad called the proposal "racist". In protest, he submitted a "mirror image" bill to the Knesset proposing that Hebron's Arab residents be removed "in order to protect the Jews of Hebron".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Eldad's 2009 proposal that Palestinian Arabs be given Jordanian citizenship drew a formal protest from the Jordanian foreign minister.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2012, Eldad and Michael Ben-Ari launched a new party, Otzma LeYisrael.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> However, the party failed to cross the 2% threshold in the 2013 elections, and Eldad subsequently lost his Knesset seat.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Political beliefs

In 2008, Eldad said he planned to introduce "anti-Islamization legislation" in the Knesset in order to "confront the enemy within and without". He would reveal details of the plan at his "Facing Jihad" conference the same month.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In response to David Miliband's statement that the Israeli cloning of British passports is "intolerable", Eldad commented in 2010: "I think the British are being hypocritical, and I do not wish to insult dogs here, since some dogs show true loyalty, [but] who gave the British the right to judge us on the war on terror?".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon in October 2010, Eldad stated: "History would have been different if in 1939, some Jewish soldier had succeeded in taking Hitler out. If Ahmadinejad can be in the crosshairs of an IDF rifle when he comes to throw rocks at us, he must not return home alive."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

External links

• Arieh Eldad website
• Aryeh Eldad Moledet website Template:In lang
• Template:MKlink
• Civil Disobedience - in the Context of the Current Policies of the Governernment of Israel Israel Resource Review, 2 May 2005
• Arieh Eldad News and Updates