Yosef Weitz

Yosef Weitz was born in 1890 in Boremel

Yosef Weitz was born in 1890 in Boremel, in Volhynia in the Russian Empire, to a family of rabbis. His father Avraham was a Hovevei Zion supporter and owned forests. He studied in a heder and a yeshiva and began working for a living as a teenager.

He planned to study agronomy in Odessa in 1905, but pogroms forced him home. In 1907 he was called up to the Russian army and was released because of poor eyesight. In 1908 he came to Palestine with his sister Miriam and worked as a farm laborer and watchman in Rehovot.

He joined The Young Worker party and in 1911 helped organize the Union of Agricultural Laborers. In 1915 he was sent to manage the Sejera farm in the Lower Galilee. He helped found Yavniel and, in 1924, the Beit Hakerem neighborhood in Jerusalem.

From 1932 he led land purchases for the Jewish National Fund, which began buying directly from Arab owners and opened five district offices. By 1948 the fund held about 940,000 dunams, three quarters bought during his tenure. During the 1948 war he urged that Palestinian refugees not return and that empty villages be razed, and he became known as the Architect of Transfer.

As head of the forestry department he promoted mass planting, largely of Aleppo pine, and was called the Father of the Forests. He was the first head of the Israel Land Administration. His son Yehiam was killed in 1946 in a Palmach operation, and he died in 1972.