Meir Vilner

Meir Vilner (Hebrew: מאיר וילנר ), born Ber Kovner, ( born October 23, 1918 in Vilnius, † June 5, 2003 in Tel Aviv ) was a communist politician and Jewish Israeli Chairman of the Communist Party of Israel ( Maki ), which primarily consisted of Arab Israelis. He was the youngest and longest surviving of the seven signatories of the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948.

Life

Vilner (now Lithuania) born in the Polish Vilnius. He began his political life as leader of the Hashomer Hatzair socialist Zionist group. But soon disillusioned him the Zionist groups in which he recognized a tendency to dream of the Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel, instead of changing the current situation of the Jews in their home countries. That's why he started using the pseudonym Meir Vilner to work for the banned Communist Workers Party of Poland. This work he finished in 1938, when he fled from Poland to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Most members of his family died in the Holocaust.

Then Vilner studied history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Even in Palestine, which would become the State of Israel soon, Vilner was disillusioned by the Zionist policy. He claimed that the anti-Semitism that was directed against the Jews in Vilnius, would now meet the Arabs. He joined the Palestine Communist Party in which both Arab and Israeli members accepted, but supported the UN partition plan for Palestine. Vilner criticized both the British and the Israeli government, however, justified the signing of the Israeli declaration of independence on the grounds that as another British colony would be eliminated.

In 1949 he was elected as a member of Rakah in the Knesset. Later he moved to Maki. He remained as the representative of Maki to 1965 in the Knesset when he renounced together with Emil Habibi and Tawfik Toubi after disagreements about the growing anti- Israel stance of the Soviet Union from the Rakah ( Vilner was on the side of the USSR ). Before the elections to the Knesset in 1977 Rakah was part of Hadash and Vilner remained until 1990 a member of the Knesset.

Shortly after the 1967 Six Day War ( which had been rejected the Rakah ), a member of the right -wing party Gahal committed a knife attack on Vilner, but from which he recovered.

Personal

Vilner was with Esther Vilenska, an Israeli communist politician, married. They had two sons, but they were later divorced. Abba Kovner Vilners cousin was a Hebrew writer, resistance fighter and leader of the partisans Fareinikte Partisaner Organisatzije.

Publications

• Welcome address to the XI. Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. ( in: Proceedings of the XI Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany Dietz Verlag Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-320-00663-0. .. )