Moshe Carmel

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Moshe Carmel
Date of birth 17 January 1911
Year of Aliyah 1924
Date of death August 14, 2003
Knesset(s) 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th
Party Alignment
Former parties Labour Unity
Gov't roles
(current in bold)		 Minister of Transportation

Moshe Carmel (Hebrew: משה כרמל‎, born 17 January 1911, died August 14, 2003) was an Israeli soldier and politician. He served as Minister of Transportation for eight years.

[edit] Background

Born in Mińsk Mazowiecki in central Poland, Carmel emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1924 when he was 13 years old. He was a founding member of Kibbutz Na'an, and was active in the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed (the Working and Learning Youth) youth movement. Between 1939 and 1941 he was imprisoned along with 41 other members of Haganah, including Moshe Dayan by the British Police. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he was commander of the Carmeli Brigade, which was especially known for the attack on the the mixed port city of Haifa in April 1948 under the operation title of Operation Mivtza Bi’ur Hametz (Operation Passover Cleansing this was based on Operation Scissors a plan, previously drawn up in March)[1] despite pleas from the Jewish mayor and many councillors to stay out and show restraint towards the Arab population. None the less, after Haifa fell on April 22, all but 4,000 of its 70,000 Arab citizens fled: some feared Jewish reprisals as had occurred at Balad al-Sheikh on the 12 December[2] and again on the 31 December where the local commander, Haim Avinoam, was ordered to ‘encircle the village and kill the largest possible number of men, damage property, but refrain from attacking women and children.’[3]and the reprisal raids on Tira and Hawassa [4]

On May 18 1948, his men took Acre, which the UN had earmarked for the Arab section of divided Palestine.

Moshe Carmel is most well known for Operation Hiram, the invasion of Northern Galilee; the area set for Arab Partition and the start of the problems for the villages of Kafr Bir'im.

He was elected to the third Knesset in 1955 as a member of Labour Unity and was appointed Minister of Transportation. He retained his seat in the 1959 and 1961 elections, and was reappointed Minister of Transportation towards the end of the fifth Knesset in 1965. When Labour Unity merged with Mapai to form the Alignment, Carmel joined the new party and retained his ministerial post in the sixth Knesset.

Carmel remained a Knesset member until 1977, and published two books; Northern Campaigns (1949) and Between the Walls (1965)

[edit] Reference

  1. ^ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris p. 189
  2. ^ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris p. 100
  3. ^ The ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé p. 59
  4. ^ The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-1951 by Ilan Pappé p. 82
v • d • e
Transportation Ministers of Israel Flag of Israel
David Remez (1948-50) • Dov Yosef (1950-51) • David-Zvi Pinkas (1951-52) • David Ben-Gurion (1952) • Yosef Serlin (1952-53) • Yosef Sapir (1953-55) • Zalman Aran (1955) • Moshe Carmel (1955-59) • Yitzhak Ben-Aharon (1959-62) • Israel Bar-Yehuda (1962-65) • Moshe Carmel (1965-69) • Ezer Weizman (1969-70) • Shimon Peres (1970-74) • Aharon Yariv (1974) • Gad Yaacobi (1974-77) • Menachem Begin (1977) • Meir Amit (1977-78) • Haim Landau (1979-1981) • Haim Corfu (1981-88) • Moshe Katsav (1988-92) • Israel Kessar (1992-96) • Yitzhak Levy (1996-1998) • Shaul Yahalom (1998-1999) • Yitzhak Mordechai (1999-2000) • Amnon Lipkin-Shahak (2000-01) • Efraim Sneh (2001-2002) • Ariel Sharon (2002) • Tzachi Hanegbi (2002-03) • Avigdor Lieberman (2003-2004) • Meir Sheetrit (2004-2006) • Shaul Mofaz (2006-date)

[edit] External links

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