Benjamin Halevy

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Benjamin Halevy
Date of birth 6 May 1910
Place of birth Germany
Year of Aliyah 1933
Date of death 8 July 1996
Knesset(s) 7th, 8th, 9th
Party Independent
Former parties Gahal, Likud, Dash,
Democratic Movement

Benjamin Halevy (Hebrew: בנימין הלוי‎, born 6 May 1910, died 8 July 1996) was an Israeli judge and politician.

[edit] Biography

He was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of Freiburg, Gottingen and Berlin. He immigrated to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine in 1933 after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Halevy was a Magistrate Judge in Jerusalem during the Mandate period, from 1938 until Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. He served as a District Judge and the President of the Jerusalem District Court until 1963 when he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel.

Halevy was the sole judge at the trial of the Kafr Qasim massacre's perpetrators, and in his decision famously wrote, "The distinguishing mark of a manifestly illegal order is that above such an order should fly, like a black flag, a warning saying: 'Prohibited!'" He was later a judge at the trial of Adolf Eichmann.

In 1969 Halevy resigned from the court in order to enter politics. He was elected to the Seventh Knesset for the Gahal (Herut-Liberal Bloc) list, and again to the Eighth Knesset in 1973 after Gahal had merged into Likud. He later left the party to sit as an independent MK. In the 1977 elections, he was returned to the Knesset on Dash's list, but the party split up after a year, and Halevy joined the Democratic Movement, before leaving to again sit as an independent. During the Ninth Knesset he also served as deputy speaker.

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