Michael Ben-Yair

Michael Ben-Yair was born in 1942 in Jerusalem

Ben-Yair was born in Jerusalem in 1942 and grew up in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where his grandmother owned a home. His father came from Iran, and his mother was born in the Land of Israel to parents of Georgian origin. In January 1948, during the War of Independence, the Haganah required his family and the other Jewish families there to leave.

He attended the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa as part of its military boarding school. He served in the IDF from 1961 to 1963 and later earned a law degree from Tel Aviv University in 1968.

From 1978 he was a magistrate judge in Acre and Haifa, then a district judge in Haifa and Tel Aviv. In 1990 he sat on the Supreme Court for 6 months, where he wrote a minority opinion in a case on easements. He was Attorney General from 1993, dealing with issues such as limits on physical pressure by the Shin Bet and declaring Kahanist groups terrorist organizations.

After his term he taught commercial law at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University and worked as an arbitrator and mediator. He sits on the public councils of B'Tselem, Yesh Din and the New Israel Fund, and has written critically about Israeli rule in the West Bank. In 2013 he published a book on Sheikh Jarrah, and in 2025 his family regained control of his grandmother's house after a legal battle.