Pinhas Lavon

Pinchas Lawon (Hebrew פנחס לבון, often English-language Pinhas Lavon; born Pinhas Lubianiker; born July 12, 1904 in Kopytschynzi, Galicia (now Ukraine ); † January 24, 1976 in Tel -Aviv, Israel ) was a Israeli politician of the Labour Party.

Lawon migrated to a law degree, which he completed in Poland in 1929 to Palestine. There he led a group that built a church again, which had been destroyed during the Arab uprisings. In the years 1937-1938 he shared with Yitzhak Ben Aharon the post of Secretary General of Mapai, whose Executive Committee he was elected in 1942.

From the first Israeli election 1949, he was until 1961 a member of the Knesset and in 1950 was in the second government Minister for Agriculture. In the following two cabinets of the second Knesset, he was Minister without Portfolio and finally in the fifth cabinet, under Moshe Scharet, Secretary of Defense; this office he held until February 21, 1955. In 1949 he was elected Secretary General of the Histadrut, he received this post until 1950 and again from 1956 to 1961, when he must because of Lawon affair for which he had to resign as defense minister, also lost this post.

Lawon affair

Elaboration: Lavon Affair

The Lawon affair that bedeviled the internal politics of Israel for a decade, came through the discovery of Jewish spies in Egypt rolling. These attacked American targets in Egypt to wreak diplomatic damage between these countries. The political responsibility for this was for years a dispute, in which stood on one side of Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, and especially David Ben Gurion, the Lawon blamed, and on the other side Lawon himself, Benjamin Gibli accused, behind his back, the attacks planned to have. Although Lawon was supported by Moshe and Golda Meir Scharet and a seven-member ministerial Commission rejected the allegations, he was defeated ultimately in political intrigue and ended his political career.