Michael Bar-Zohar

Michael Bar-Zohar
Date of birth	30 January 1938 (1938-01-30) (age 73)
Place of birth	Sofia, Bulgaria
Year of aliyah	1948
Knessets	10, 12
Party	Labor Party (1991-1992)
Former parties	Alignment (1981-84, 1988-91)

Dr Michael Bar-Zohar (Hebrew: מיכאל בר-זהר‎, born 30 January 1938) is an Israeli historian, novelist and politician. His World War II-era nonfiction and fiction works have been published in English, French, Hebrew, and other languages. He was also a member of the Knesset on behalf of the Alignment and Labor Party during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Biography

Born in Bulgaria, Bar-Zohar immigrated to Israel in 1948. He attended High School Heh in Tel Aviv and went on to study economics and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also studied at the Institute of Political Science in the University of Paris, where he earned a PhD.

He became science editor for Davar, a weekly newspaper in 1958, but left the job the following year. Between 1960 and 1964 he wrote for LaMerhav, an Israeli newspaper in Paris. In 1967 he became a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and later lectured at the University of Haifa between 1970 and 1973.

Political career

Bar-Zohar became involved in politics in the 1960s, and joined Rafi upon its foundation in 1965. Rafi merged into the Alignment in 1968, forming formed the Labor Party faction, with Bar-Zohar becoming a Labor Party member, eventually joining its central committee.

He was first elected to the Knesset in the 1981 elections on the Alignment's list and was a member of the Education and Culture Committee. Although he lost his seat in the 1984 election, he regained it in the 1988 elections, after which he was appointed chairman of the Education and Culture Committee. As a protege of Moshe Dayan, Bar-Zohar was known as a hawk within the Labor Party. He lost his seat in the 1992 election and did not return to the Knesset, despite running in Labor Party primaries in the 1990s. In 2008 he joined the new Yisrael Hazaka party formed by Ephraim Sneh, which failed to win a seat in the 2009 election.

Writings

In 1965 Bar-Zohar won the Sokolov Award for his achievements as a journalist. He published several books, including biographies of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres, several books about the Israeli security organizations, and an account of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews from the Nazis in World War II.

Bibliography

• A Bridge Over the Mediterranean: Franco-Israeli Relations Between 1947-1964 (1964)
• Hunting for the German Scientists (1965)
• The Longest Month (1965)
• The Paratroopers Book (1969)
• The Custodian: Isser Harel and the Adventures of the Shin Bet (1970)^[1]
• Spies in the promised land Houghton Mifflin (1972) ISBN 0395136415 ISBN 978-0395136416
• Ben Gurion: a biography (centennial edition). New York: Adama Books, 1986 (c.1978). ISBN 0-915361-59-0 (hc) ISBN 0-915361-60-4 (pbk)
• Beyond Hitler’s grasp: the heroic rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Media, 1998. ISBN 1-58062-060-4.
• The Quest for The Red Prince: The Israeli Hunt for Ali Hassan Salameh the PLO leader who masterminded the Olympic Games Massacre. By Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber. Includes black-and-white photographic plates which include Yasser Arafat, together with an index.^[2]
• Dr. Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber (1983) Massacre in Munich The Lyons Press, ISBN 1-59228-945-2
• Hitler's Jewish Spy: The Most Extraordinary True Spy Story of World War II Sidgwick & Jackson (1985) ISBN 028399293X ISBN 978-0283992933
• Brothers (1993)
• Bitter Scent: The Case of L'Oreal, Nazis, and the Arab Boycott (1996) ISBN 978-0525940685
• Shimon Peres The Biography (2006) ISBN 978-1-4000-6292-8

References

1. ^ Knesset Member, Isser Harel
2. ^ Detail from a copy of The Quest for The Red Prince...... published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1983 with an ISBN 0 297 78063 8

External links

• Michael Bar-Zohar Knesset website
• Works by or about Michael Bar-Zohar in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Bar-Zohar, Michael
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	30 January 1938
Place of birth	Sofia, Bulgaria
Date of death
Place of death

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