Mordechai Ben-Porat

Mordechai Ben-Porat was born in 1923 in Baghdad

Ben-Porat was born in Baghdad, Iraq, to a Jewish family, the oldest of 11 children. He went to high school there and survived the Farhud in 1941. In 1942 he joined the underground Zionist movement HeHalutz.

He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1945 and joined the Haganah in 1947. He completed the first IDF officers course and fought in the War of Independence as a company commander. From 1949 to 1951 he helped organize the immigration of Iraqi Jews and was arrested 4 times by the Iraqi authorities.

He studied political science at the Hebrew University and administration at Tel Aviv University. From 1955 to 1969 he headed the Or Yehuda local council, where he founded the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center. He entered the Knesset for Rafi in 1965 and was reelected for the Alignment in 1969 and 1973.

In 1979 he went on a Jewish Agency mission to help Jews leave Iran. He returned to the Knesset for Telem in 1981 and was a minister without portfolio from 1982 to 1984. He joined Likud in 1988.

He published autobiographies in 1996 and 2018 and received the Israel Prize in 2001. He died at his home in Ramat Gan on 3 January 2022.