Shulamit Aloni

Shulamit Aloni (Hebrew: שולמית אלוני‎‎; 27 December 1928 – 24 January 2014) was an Israeli politician. She founded the Ratz party, was leader of the Meretz party, Leader of the Opposition from 1988 to 1990, and served as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993. In 2000, she won the Israel Prize.

Shulamit Aloni
Date of birth(1928-12-27)27 December 1928
Place of birthPoland
Date of death24 January 2014(2014-01-24) (aged 85)
Place of deathKfar Shmaryahu, Israel
Knessets6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Faction represented in Knesset
1965–1967Labor Alignment
1967–1968Labor Party
1968–1969Alignment
1974–1975Ratz
1975–1976Ya'ad – Civil Rights Movement
1976–1981Ratz
1981–1984Alignment
1984–1992Ratz
1992–1996Meretz
Ministerial roles
1974Minister without Portfolio
1992–1993Minister of Education and Culture
1993Minister without Portfolio
1993–1996Minister of Communications
1993–1996Minister of Science and the Arts
Born
Shulamit Adler

Biography

Early life

Shulamit Adler was born in Poland. Her mother was a seamstress and her father was a carpenter, both descended from Polish rabbinical families. The family migrated to Mandatory Palestine when she was a child, and Aloni grew up in Tel Aviv. She was sent to boarding school during World War II while her parents served in the British Army. As a youth she was a member of the socialist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and the Palmach. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, she was involved in military struggles for the Old City of Jerusalem and was captured by Jordanian forces.[1] Following the establishment of the state of Israel, she worked with child refugees and helped establish a school for immigrant children. She taught in a school while studying law.[2] After her marriage in 1952 to Reuven Aloni, the founder of Israel Lands Administration, she moved to Kfar Shmaryahu.

Aloni joined Mapai in 1959. She also worked as an attorney and hosted a radio show Outside Working Hours that dealt with human rights and women's rights. She also wrote columns for several newspapers.

Political career
Aloni in the Knesset in 1965.

In 1965, Aloni was elected to the Knesset on the list of the Alignment, an alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda, and subsequently founded the Israel Consumers Council, which she chaired for four years. She left the Alignment in 1973 and established the Citizens Rights Movement, which became known as Ratz. The party advocated electoral reform, separation of religion and state and human rights and won three seats in the 1973 Knesset elections. Ratz initially joined the Alignment-led government with Aloni as Minister without Portfolio but she resigned immediately in protest at the appointment of Yitzhak Rafael as Minister of Religions. Ratz briefly became Ya'ad – Civil Rights Movement when independent MK Aryeh Eliav joined the party, but returned to its original status soon after.

Throughout the 1970s Aloni attempted to create a dialogue with Palestinians in hopes of achieving a lasting peace settlement. During the 1982 Lebanon War she established the International Center for Peace in the Middle East. In the run-up to the 1984 elections, Ratz aligned with Peace Now and the Left Camp of Israel to increase its size in the Knesset to five seats. In 1992, she led Ratz into an alliance with Shinui and Mapam to form the new Meretz party,[3] which won 12 seats under her leadership in the elections that year. Aloni became Minister of Education under Yitzhak Rabin but was forced to resign after a year due to her outspoken statements on matters of religion. As Education Minister, she also criticized organized tours by Israeli high school pupils to Holocaust concentration camps on grounds that such visits were turning Israeli youth into aggressive, nationalistic xenophobes, claiming that students "march with unfurled flags, as if they've come to conquer Poland".[4] She was reappointed Minister of Communications and Science and Culture and served until 1996 when she retired from party politics.

After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Aloni expressed her sentiments that the agreements were a positive turning point on an historic scale: "I feel like on the 29th of November [the date of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine]; we did not know then what we were heading for, but we knew we were heading for great days."[5]

After the massacre of 29 Muslims in Hebron, West Bank on February 25, 1994 perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, Aloni called for the expulsion of Jewish settlers from Hebron.[6]

Last years

In a 2002 interview with American journalist Amy Goodman, Aloni said that charges of antisemitism are "a trick we use" to suppress criticism of Israel coming from within the United States, while for criticism coming from Europe "we bring up the Holocaust."[7]

Aloni was a board member of Yesh Din, an organisation founded in 2005 which focuses on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She defended U.S. President Jimmy Carter's use of the word "apartheid" in the title of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.[8] Later, Aloni said, "I hate to cover up things that should be open to the sun."

Personal life

With her husband, Reuven Aloni, she had three sons:

Reuven Aloni died in 1988. Shulamit Aloni died at age 85, on 24 January 2014.[9][10]

  • Young Shulamit in the 1940s.
  • Shulamit Aloni as a young woman with her mother.
  • Shulamit and Reuven Aloni in the 1980s.
  • Aloni in 2002 at a Peace Now demonstration.
  • Aloni with grandchildren in the 2000s.

Shulamit Aloni Prize

In 2018, the Shulamit Aloni Prize was established.[11] The prize is awarded by the Shulamit Aloni Foundation, a non-profit organization created by a group of Aloni's family members and leading media and cultural professionals for this purpose.[12] The prize, which bears a monetary award, is bestowed to its recipients each year in the Jaffa Theater (aka The Arab-Hebrew Theater), to creators of cultural works (theater, film, poetry and prose) in both Hebrew and Arabic whose work promotes human rights.[13][14] Inaugural prize recipients included Rana Abu Fraihah (Arabic Culture Prize), Renana Raz (Hebrew Culture Prize) and Sami Michael (Lifetime Achievement Prize).[15] Additional prize recipients include Ayat Abou Shmeiss for Arabic Culture, and Achinoam Nini for Lifetime Achievement.[16]

Awards and recognition

Published works
  • "Up the down escalator" in Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, ed. Robin Morgan, 1984.[20]
  • Democracy in Shackles (Demokratia be'azikim), Am Oved (in Hebrew)[21]
  • The Citizen and His Country, published in 1958
  • Israel: Democracy or Ethnocracy? published in 2008
gollark: And it's a low-end phone.
gollark: My phone's CPU is faster than a Pi's.
gollark: Raspberry Pis are doubleplusunfast even for SBCs.
gollark: Don't. It would be slöw.
gollark: Interesting. I might look into some sort of dynamic pricing model for a shop.

See also

References
  1. Shulamit Aloni Jewish Virtual Library; accessed January 25, 2014.
  2. "Shulamit Aloni | Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  3. "Shulamit Aloni | Israeli politician". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  4. Tom Hundley (9 May 1993). "2 Views Of A Horror". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  5. "Shulamit (Adler) Aloni (Hebrew)". palmach.org.il. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
  6. Rudoren, Jodi (2014). "Shulamit Aloni, Outspoken Israeli Lawmaker, Dies at 86". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  7. Israel’s First Lady of Human Rights: A Conversation with Shulamit Aloni democracynow.org; 14 August 2002; accessed 20 October 2015.
  8. Shulamit Aloni (8 January 2007). "Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel". Counterpunch. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  9. Yaron Druckman (24 January 2014). "Former minister Shulamit Aloni dies at the age of 85". Ynetnews. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  10. "Shulamit Aloni, former minister and staunch civil rights supporter, dies at 85". Haaretz. 24 January 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  11. "קרן שולמית אלוני ותיאטרון יפו יעניקו פרס חדש ליוצרים ערבים ויהודים". www.haaretz.co.il (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  12. "פרס היצירה על שם שולמית אלוני | עדכון חדשות". הטלוויזיה החברתית (in Hebrew). 2018-04-04. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  13. ""אפשר גם אחרת": פרס שולמית אלוני יוענק לאמנים ויוצרים". וואלה! חדשות (in Hebrew). 2018-06-09. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  14. "לחתור נגד רוח התקופה: פרס יצירה חדש על שם שולמית אלוני". שיחה מקומית (in Hebrew). 2018-07-03. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  15. "רננה רז ורנא אבו־פריחה זכו בפרס שולמית אלוני ליצירות עבריות וערביות". www.haaretz.co.il (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  16. "פרס היצירה עש שולמית אלוני". YouTube. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  17. "List of recipients of the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award on the Association of Human Rights in Israel website" (in Hebrew). Archived from the original on 19 August 2010. Retrieved 20 June 2010.
  18. "Israel Prize Official Site (in Hebrew)".
  19. "Israel Prize Official Site (in Hebrew) – Judges' Rationale for Grant to Recipient".
  20. "Table of Contents: Sisterhood is global :". Catalog.vsc.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  21. Yair Sheleg (23 November 2008). "The road to perdition". Haaretz. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
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