Ehud Adiv

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Dr. Ehud 'Udi' Adiv is an Israeli social scientist and political activist who was convicted of spying for Syria.

Ehud was born and raised in a kibbutz named Gan Shmuel in Israel. He was the son of one of the kibbutz founders. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he was a political activist. As a result of his activities on the far left of the Israeli political spectrum at the time, he spent some years in prison.

1 Education
2 Controversy
3 Current status
4 Writings by Udi Adiv
5 Films about Udi Adiv
6 References

[edit] Education

His undergraduate studies were in philosophy and Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University.

After his release from prison, in the early 1980s, he finished a PhD (Politics and identity: a critical analysis of Israeli historiography and political thought. Ehud Adiv. London Ph.D. 1998) thesis in the University of London (under the supervision of Sami Zubaida, one of the leading scholars on the Middle East) on Zionist historiography and particularly on the 1948 historiography. He was then appointed as a lecturer in the Open University of Israel, a position he still holds.

Dr. Adiv's main work and publications are generally related to the question of nationalism and particularly that of Israeli identity.

[edit] Controversy

In February 1973 controversy erupted in Israel over the political trial of Daud Turki, Udi Adiv and Dan Vered, together with other Israeli leftist radicals. The trial marked a unique milestone in the history of the democratic and anti-Zionist opposition in Israel. The story that emerged was that the Red Front, a splinter offshoot of the Socialist Organization in Israel (Matzpen in the early 1970s) aimed to form a common anti-Zionist military resistance underground for Arabs and Jews inside Israel and link forces with the Palestine Liberation Organization resistance to Zionism and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip. Roughly thirty people, both Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, were brought to trial. According to testimony given in the course of the trial it became known that Udi Adiv traveled clandestinely to Damascus via Athens to meet PLO resistance leaders. The case - dubbed by the Hebrew press as the "Syrian spy ring trial" - was to become perhaps the most sensational political trial in Israeli history until that time. Udi Adiv and Daud Turki were each sentenced to seventeen years imprisonment. Dan Vered received a sentence of ten years.

Adiv was mentioned by Yasser Arafat in his famous "Gun and the Olive Branch" speech before the United Nations General Assembly in 1974. In that speech, Arafat said the following about Udi Adiv:

"As he stood in an Israeli military court, the Jewish revolutionary, Ehud Adiv, said : 'I am no terrorist; I believe that a democratic State should exist on this land.' Adiv now languishes in a Zionist prison among his co-believers. To him and his colleagues I send my heartfelt good wishes."

Of his experience, Udi Adiv said:

"For me and for many young people, the 1967 war and its aftermath were a real shock. I woke up to the hypocrisy of the Mapam, its nationalism and refusal of any form of solidarity with the Palestinians. As a student I tried to make direct contact with the latter. And so, after a succession of secret meetings, I ended up, stupidly, in Damascus. Needless to say, I never gave the Syrians a scrap of information."

[edit] Current status

Ehud Adiv currently lives in israel, lately divorced from his wife Sylvia. Syvlia is the daughter of Marcus Klingberg, who was convicted in Israel for passing biological warfare secrets to the Eastern Bloc. He is a lecturer in social sciences at the Open University of Israel.