Pinchas Goldstein

Pinchas Goldstein was born in 1939 in Tel Aviv

Goldstein was born in Tel Aviv in 1939, during the Mandate era. He attended the Haifa military boarding school and later studied law at the Hebrew University in its Tel Aviv branch, but did not graduate.

He joined the Liberal Party and was active in its student and workers' groups. From 1978 to 1981 he sat on the board of the Israel Electric Corporation, and from 1978 to 1982 he served on the Executive of the World Zionist Organization.

He entered the Knesset on the Likud list in 1981 and was re-elected in 1984 and 1988. He chaired the Knesset sports committee and proposed several private bills, including a national anthem bill that passed in 2004. He also served as a director of a construction company, which drew criticism over a conflict of interest.

In 1990 he and four other Likud members left the party and founded the Party for the Advancement of the Zionist Idea, later called the New Liberal Party. He did not back a coalition led by Shimon Peres, and the faction joined a Likud-led government in which he was a deputy minister. The party failed to pass the threshold in 1992 and he lost his seat.

In later years he was honorary treasurer of the Israel Olympic Committee and a director of the Phoenix insurance company. He died of cancer at his home in Kfar Saba in 2007, survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.