Matan Vilnai

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Matan Vilnai
Date of birth	20 May 1944 (1944-05-20) (age 64)
Knesset(s)	15th, 16th, 17th (current)
Party	Labour
Former parties	One Israel
Gov't roles (current in bold)	Minister of Science, Culture & Sport Minister in the PM's Office Minister of Science and Technology

Matan Vilnai (Hebrew: מתן וילנאי‎, born 20 May 1944) is an Israeli politician and a former Major General in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He is currently Deputy Defense Minister.

Contents 1 Background 2 Political career 3 "Shoah"/Holocaust quote 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Background

Vilnai was born in Jerusalem in 1944. His father was Prof. Ze'ev Vilnai, a pioneer in the sphere of Israeli geography and Land of Israel studies, from whom he inherited a love of nature and hiking.^[1] He was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces in 1966, serving in the Paratroopers Brigade and the elite reconnaissance unit Sayeret Matkal. He took part in Operation Thunderball, also known as the Entebbe Raid, to free Jewish and Israeli passengers taken hostage by Palestinian and German terrorists after their Air France plane was hijacked to Entebbe, Uganda.

Today Vilnai lives in Mevaseret Zion and is a married father of three.

[edit] Political career

In the run up to the 1999 elections Vilnai joined the Labour Party (which was running as part of the One Israel alliance), hoping to win a place on its Knesset list. He succeeded, and was voted in to the Knesset. Ehud Barak appointed him Minister of Science, Culture, and Sport. Vilnai gave up his Knesset seat six months after the election (he was replaced by Colette Avital), but remained a minister. After Ariel Sharon beat Barak in the 2001 election for Prime Minister, Vilnai was reappointed to his post in the new government.

He re-entered the Knesset after the 2003 elections second on Labour's list,^[2] but lost his ministerial post as Sharon formed a right-wing coalition that excluded Labour. However, when several parties left the coalition in the face of the disengagement plan, Labour was invited into the government in January 2005. Vilnai was initially appointed Minister in the Prime Minister's Office. In August 2005 he was appointed Acting Minister of Science and Technology, and the post was made permanent in November.

In the run-up to the 2006 elections, Vilnai competed in the election for Labour Party leader alongside Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, ^[3] but was beaten by Amir Peretz. However, he did retain his Knesset seat in the elections, placing 11th on Labour's list. After Ehud Barak won the party leadership election in 2007 he appointed Vilnai as Deputy Minister of Defense.

[edit] "Shoah"/Holocaust quote

The factual accuracy of this section is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.(March 2008)

In February, 2008, Vilnai threatened that Gazan Palestinians "will bring upon themselves a bigger 'shoah' because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." The word shoah (שואה), literally "disaster", has been translated e.g. by Reuters as "holocaust"^[4], which a government official later tried to play down^[5].

However, in colloquial Hebrew, the word shoah (or haShoah, "the shoah") has in fact come to refer to the Nazi crime against humanity almost exclusively (shoah garinit^{[verification needed]} "nuclear shoah" for nuclear war is also often seen). Conversely it is also preferred by almost all Israeli and many international scholars to "holocaust", because of the latter term's original meaning of something which is burned as a sacrifice to a god.^[6]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Matan Vilnai on the Knesset website (in English)

Persondata
NAME	Vilnai, Matan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Israeli politician
DATE OF BIRTH	[20 May]], 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH	Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH