Yitzhak Kahan

Yitzhak ( Yitzhak ) Kahan (born 15 November 1913 in Brody, Ukraine, † 24 April 1985) was an Israeli lawyer and judge.

Biography

After schooling, he studied law and economics and emigrated in 1935 in the British Mandate of Palestine.

On October 7, 1970, he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court.

As the successor of Moshe Landau, he was appointed in 1982 as President of the Supreme Court and held this office until his 70th year in November 1983.

In this role he was appointed by the government under Prime Minister Menachem Begin as chairman of the eponymous Kahan Commission on 28 September 1982. The next to it from the Supreme Court Aharon Barak as well as the retired Major General Yona Efrat existing Commission should investigate the massacre of Sabra and Shatila.

The then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon has been assigned by the Commission, a political responsibility for the massacre, without him intent was charged. Due to a pronounced by the Commission Recommendation Raful Eitan was replaced as Chief of Staff and Sharon as defense minister in 1983. The then Foreign Minister and later Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir weighed the Kahan Commission "lack of sensitivity and vigilance" to.

Sharon, who reviled the incriminating test results, however, was minister without portfolio in the same year. In Belgium, was initially opened an investigation against him in 2002 for the massacre, but the charges were dropped back. An attempt to prosecute the main perpetrators Elie Hobeika immediate, has been made by either side of Arab States nor by the Israelis. Rather, he held after the end of the Lebanese civil war eight years several ministerial posts in the government of Syria controlled Lebanon.

He was the brother of long-time members of the Knesset and Deputy Minister of Education and Culture, Kalman Kahana.