Berman, Yitzhak

Yitzhak Berman was born in 1913 in Berdichev in the family of Rabbi Jacob Berman. At the end of 1921, the Berman family immigrated to Palestine . There, Yitzhak received a traditional Jewish education, graduated from a public school and teacher seminary in Jerusalem , after which he continued his education in England, having graduated from the University of London and obtained a lawyer's license ^[1] .

Upon his return to Palestine, Berman joined the Jewish underground organization EZEL , in 1939 becoming one of the leading employees of its intelligence structure MESHI. His rise in the hierarchy occurred in the period after the arrest by the British mandatory authorities of the leader of the ECL, David Raziel , when the direct commander of Berman, the future founder of the underground LEHI , Abraham Stern, came forward. During the years of World War II, Berman was a member of the supreme command of the ETSEL and the Central Committee of the revisionist party . Berman was one of the EZEL activists who developed plans for introducing the organization’s agents in the USSR, Poland and North Africa in the early years of the war, and was also responsible for the relationship between the EZEL’s headquarters and the British command during the war, when the organization collaborated with the British. In 1941–45, Berman officially served in the armed forces of Great Britain ^[2] .

After the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948, Berman volunteered for the Israel Defense Forces , where he served until 1950, being discharged with the rank of major. From 1950 to 1954, he served as CEO at the Israeli representative offices of Kaiser-Frazer and Willys-Overland , and then returned to law practice ^[3] .

Since 1951, Yitzhak Berman was a member of the Party of General Zionists . In 1964, he headed the Tel Aviv branch of the party, and in 1974 was elected chairman of its central committee. After the party joined the Likud bloc, Berman was elected to the Knesset of the 9th convocation from this bloc, headed the Knesset committee , and from 1980 to 1981 served as speaker of the Knesset . After being re-elected to the Knesset of the 10th convocation, Berman received the portfolio of the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure in the new office of Menachem Begin . In September 1982, he refused the ministerial chair because of disagreements with other members of the government on the appointment of an investigative commission for events in the camps of Sabra and Shatil (Berman demanded greater independence for the commission, the head of which proposed to appoint a member of the Supreme Court , but other cabinet members insisted on the appointment of a government commission ^[4] ). In the mid-80s, Berman became one of the founders of the new Liberal Center party, which, however, failed to bring its representatives to the Knesset. According to another Knesset speaker, Reuven Rivlin , in the course of his parliamentary activities, Berman contributed to the formation of democratic institutions in Israel, including laying the foundation for a future law on political parties ^[5] .

Yitzhak Berman died in a nursing home in Tel Aviv in 2013 at the age of one hundred years. He was buried in the cemetery of Israeli statesmen on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem ^[4] .

• David Tidhar. Lawyer Yitzhak Berman // Encyclopedia of pioneers and builders of Yishuv = אנציקלופדיה לחלוצי הישוב ובוניו. - 1969. - T. 18. - S. 5355-5356.

• on the Knesset website