Ya'akov Arnon

Ya'akov Arnon was born in 1913 in Amsterdam

Arnon was born in 1913 in Amsterdam as Jaap van Amerongen, to a well-off Jewish family of diamond dealers. He studied economics at the University of Amsterdam and then worked in his family's diamond polishing plant.

In 1940 he married Louisa Asscher. In 1943 the couple was sent to the Westerbork camp and released, and they then hid in Amsterdam and in southern Holland. After the war he led the Zionist Federation of the Netherlands.

He reached Israel in 1948, took the name Ya'akov Arnon, and headed the diamond supervision department. He became the first head of the budget division at the Ministry of Finance in 1953 and its director-general in 1956. In 1965 he was among the initiators of a recession, and he resigned in 1969 and later chaired the Israel Electric Corporation board.

In 1975 he co-founded the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace with Uri Avnery and Mattityahu Peled. He met PLO figure Issam Sartawi in Morocco in 1980 and Yasser Arafat in Tunis in 1983. He ran for the Knesset with Sheli in 1977 and with the Progressive List for Peace in 1984, and was not elected.

He lived in Beit HaKerem in Jerusalem and had 3 sons. He was named Yakir Yerushalayim in 1991 and died in Jerusalem in 1995. A street in Jerusalem bears his name.