Meir Cohen-Avidov

Meir Cohen-Avidov was born in 1926 in Haifa

Meir Cohen-Avidov was born in Haifa in 1926 to Victoria and Haim-Shlomo, under the name Meir Cohen. He studied at St. Luke's high school in Haifa. He then studied law at the School for Jurisprudence and Economics in Tel Aviv and qualified as a lawyer.

He joined the Irgun in 1943. The British arrested him in 1946 and held him until 1948.

In 1945 he began working as a lawyer for Haifa City Council, and he was its comptroller from 1961 to 1966. He was active in Herut, sat on its central bodies and chaired its Haifa branch. From 1969 to 1973 he was an elected member of the city council.

He entered the Knesset on the Likud list and was re-elected 3 times. He served as a Deputy Speaker and headed the Likud faction in the Histadrut from 1977 to 1981. He drew public controversy over statements on the Lebanon War, the Jewish Underground and Arabs, and he lost his seat in 1988.

He was married to Victoria and had 4 children. One brother was killed in the War of Independence, another was killed in Madrid in 1973, and his son Dov-Shimshon died in an air force training crash in 1977. After his son's death he added the name Avidov to his surname. He died in 2015.