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Yitzhak Navon |
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Yitzhak Navon
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| In office 19 April 1978 – 5 May 1983 |
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| Preceded by | Ephraim Katzir |
| Succeeded by | Chaim Herzog |
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| Born | 9 April 1921 Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Political party | Alignment |
| Spouse | Ofira Resnikov |
Yitzhak Navon (Hebrew: יצחק נבון, born 9 April 1921) is an Israeli politician, diplomat and author. He was the fifth President of Israel.
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Born in Jerusalem, Navon is a multilingual descendant of a Sephardi family of rabbis. On his father's side, he is descended from Spanish Jews who settled in Turkey after the explusion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. The family (Baruch Mizrahi family or Al Mashraki) moved to Jerusalem in 1670. On his mother's side, he is descended from the renown kabbalist Haim Ben Attar. The Ben-Atar family came from Morocco to Jerusalem in 1884.1 Navon studied Hebrew literature and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After serving in the Haganah in Jerusalem, he was sent by the Israeli foreign service to Uruguay and Argentina. Navon's wife Ofira, who was considerably younger than him, died of cancer. They had two children.
In 1951, Navon became the political secretary of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The following year he was appointed Ben-Gurion's bureau chief. He remained in this position under Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. In 1963, he became a department head at the Ministry of Education and Culture. Two years later, Navon was elected to the Knesset as a member of Ben-Gurion's Rafi, which merged into the Israeli Labor Party (part of the Alignment) in 1968. Navon served as deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the Knesset Committee on Foreign and Defense Affairs.
In 1978, Navon was elected fifth President of Israel. He was the first president with small children to move into Beit HaNassi, the presidential residence in Jerusalem. His wife, Ofira, was active in promoting the welfare of Israeli children.
Although the Israeli presidency is a ceremonial office, Navon was an outspoken advocate of a judicial commission of inquiry to probe Israel's role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre perpetrated by Lebanese Falangists in 1982.
In 1983, Navon turned down the opportunity to run for a second term of office. Instead he returned to politics, the first and only Israeli ex-president to do so. When the polls showed that Navon was more popular than Labor chairman Shimon Peres, Peres was pressured to step aside and allow Navon to take over the party leadership. Navon's fluency in the Arabic language made him especially popular among Arab and Mizrahi voters. But Navon did not accept the chairmanship. In 1984, he was elected to the Knesset and served as minister of education and culture from 1984 to 1990. He remained in the Knesset until 1992, after which he left politics.
Navon wrote two musicals, which were successfully performed at Habimah, Israel's national theater in Tel Aviv.
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