Meron Benvenisti

Meron Benvenisti was born in 1934 in Jerusalem

Benvenisti was born in Jerusalem in 1934. His father, David Benvenisti, was an educator from Thessaloniki who received the Israel Prize, and his mother Leah was a nurse at Hadassah. He attended the Leyada high school.

He did his military service in a Nahal unit at Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv and then lived at Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra from 1952 to 1955. From 1955 he studied economics and medieval history at the Hebrew University, focusing on the Crusader period, and headed the national student union. In 1982 he received a doctorate from Harvard's Kennedy School for a study of conflict in Jerusalem and Belfast.

He worked at the Ministry of Tourism and ran Teddy Kollek's first campaign for mayor of Jerusalem. Between 1967 and 1978 he was in charge of East Jerusalem at the municipality and served as deputy mayor. In 1981 he ran for the Knesset second on the Ratz list but was not elected.

He founded the West Bank Database Project, which documented developments in the West Bank. He lectured at Johns Hopkins and Ben-Gurion University and wrote a column for Haaretz from 1991 to 2009. He criticized Israeli policy toward Palestinians and called for their inclusion in the state on equal terms.

In 2012 he received the Yakir Yerushalayim award. He died on 20 September 2020.