Baruch Kimmerling

Baruch Kimmerling was born in 1939 in Turda

Kimmerling was born in 1939 in Turda, Transylvania, Romania, with cerebral palsy. In 1944 his family fled Turda in a Romani wagon amid rumors of the deportation of the Jews. The family immigrated to Israel in 1952, lived in an immigrants' camp and later settled in Netanya.

He finished high school at Ohel Shem in Ramat Gan in 1961. He was exempt from IDF service and studied sociology at the Hebrew University, earning a master's degree in 1969. His doctorate dealt with land and territory in the Jewish-Arab conflict and became the basis of his book Zionism and Territory.

Kimmerling taught sociology at the Hebrew University and held a chair at the University of Toronto. He wrote nine books and hundreds of essays, and published in newspapers such as Haaretz and The Nation. He was linked to the New Historians and criticized Israeli policy, but opposed a proposed British academic boycott of Israeli scholars.

In 1975 he married Diana Aidan, and the couple had 3 children. He used a wheelchair in his later years. He died of cancer in 2007 and was buried in a secular burial at Kibbutz Mishmarot.