Gershon Shafat

Gershon Shafat was born in 1927 in Vienna

Shafat was born Gershon Staub in Vienna, Austria, in 1927. He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1934. He attended the Moria high school in Tel Aviv and was active in the Bnei Akiva youth movement.

In 1946 he was one of the founders of kibbutz Ein Tzurim. In the War of Independence, after the Jordanian Army took Gush Etzion, he was held as a prisoner for 10 months. After his release he helped set up Ein Tzurim again at a new site.

He studied history and sociology at university. From 1956 to 1958 he coordinated the political committee of the Religious Kibbutz Movement and its purchasing organization. From 1961 to 1977 he managed the Tadmor factory.

Shafat promoted the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He joined the Gush Emunim secretariat in 1974 and was its political secretary from 1976 to 1979. He then helped found the Tehiya party and was its secretary-general from 1979 to 1985.

He entered the Knesset in 1984, lost his seat in 1988 and returned in 1990 in place of Yuval Ne'eman. He served on the Finance Committee and left the Knesset after the 1992 elections. He died in 2020.