Isi Leibler

Isi Leibler was born in 1934 in Antwerp

Leibler was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1934. As an infant he moved with his parents to Melbourne, Australia, before World War II began. His father, Abraham, was a diamond merchant.

He completed a thesis in political science at the University of Melbourne in 1958. After his father died, he took over the family diamond business, and in 1964 he began investing in travel. He founded the Jetset travel agency and sold his shares in it in 1997.

Leibler headed the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and held senior posts in the World Jewish Congress, including chairman of the governing board. In 1962 he led a campaign that made Australia the first country to raise the issue of Soviet Jews at the United Nations. He was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union in 1980, and later opened the first Jewish cultural center there, in Moscow.

In 2004 he demanded an investigation into the finances of the World Jewish Congress, and he resigned as its vice president in January 2005. The organization filed a libel suit against him and withdrew it in 2007.

In 1999 he and his wife Naomi, whom he married in 1958, moved to Jerusalem. He wrote columns for the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, and in 2016 he donated his library to Bar-Ilan University. He died in 2021.