Chaim Corfu

Chaim Corfu was born in 1921 in Jerusalem

Corfu was born in Jerusalem in 1921 to an ultra-Orthodox family. He studied at religious schools and yeshivas, including Hebron Yeshiva and Lomza Yeshiva in Petah Tikva, and finished a religious teachers seminary.

In 1937 he joined the Irgun and later sat on its Jerusalem command. As a young man he also played as a striker for Beitar Jerusalem. After his Irgun activity was exposed, the British held him in Sudan and Kenya, and he returned after Israel was founded in 1948.

He studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and became a lawyer. He sat on the Jerusalem city council for Herut from 1967 to 1969. In 1969 he entered the Knesset for Gahal and was then reelected for Likud through the twelfth Knesset.

He served as transportation minister from 1981 to 1988. In 1986 he became the first Israeli minister invited to a conference in an Arab country other than Egypt, in Morocco. In the twelfth Knesset he chaired the house committee and opposed the direct election law.

In 1992 he left the Knesset to chair the Israel Airports Authority until 1996. He died in 2015 and was survived by two daughters. In 2018 a pier at Ben Gurion Airport was named after him.