| Michael Bar-Zohar | |
|---|---|
| Date of birth | 30 January 1938 |
| 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.
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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.
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.
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.