Yitzhak Laor

Yitzhak Laor was born in 1948 in Pardes Hanna-Karkur

Yitzhak Laor was born in Pardes Hanna on April 11, 1948. His father, Josef Laufer, was born in Bielefeld, Germany, to a family from Galicia and came to the Land of Israel in 1934. His mother came from Riga, Latvia.

He grew up in Givatayim and was active in the youth movements HaNoar HaOved and HaTnua HaMeuhedet. He served in the army in Nahal. He later studied literature and theater at Tel Aviv University and wrote a doctorate there on the comedy of Hanoch Levin in 1999.

Laor joined the Israeli new left and opposed Israel's presence in the territories taken in the Six-Day War. In 1972 he refused reserve duty in Sinai and was jailed in a military prison. A military court in Nablus convicted him and other protesters in 1973 of holding an illegal demonstration.

By 2008 he had published 10 poetry books, 3 novels, 3 story collections, 2 essay books and 1 play. From 1998 he was a literary critic at Haaretz, and he taught at Tel Aviv University and the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. He edited the journal Mi-ta'am from 2005 to 2011.

In 2010 and again in 2021, several women accused him of sexual harassment, and one accused him of rape. After the 2021 accusations his work at Haaretz ended. He retired in 2018, is married with a son and lives in Tel Aviv.