Eitan Livni

Eitan Livni was born in 1919 in Hrodna

Livni was born Yeruham Livni in Grodno on 1 April 1919, to Yitzhak and Dvora. His family moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1925 and settled in Tel Aviv, where he went to school.

In 1938 he joined Betar and the Irgun, where he later served as chief operations officer. He took part in the Night of the Trains, was arrested in 1946 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was freed in the Acre Prison break and then served as an Irgun envoy in Europe.

He returned on 15 May 1948 and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He married Sara Rosenberg, a fellow Irgun member, in 1948. He later owned a starch factory until 1965 and headed the wood products branch of the Industrialists Association from 1949 to 1959.

In 1965 he became head of the Herut organization department. He chaired the Gahal and Likud directorate in 1970 and 1971 and served in the Knesset from 1974 to 1984. He sat on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, among others.

After leaving the Knesset he chaired the citrus marketing board. He died on 27 December 1991, and the Irgun emblem was engraved on his headstone. His daughter is the politician Tzipi Livni.