Aryeh Eldad

Eldad was born in Tel Aviv in 1950 and is the son of Israel Eldad, a leader of Lehi.[1][9] He lives in Kfar Adumim and has five children.[2] In a biographical account, Eldad recalled that he was 17 when Jerusalem’s Old City was captured in the 1967 war; he said he went to the Temple Mount and then the Western Wall with his father and Menachem Begin, where they discussed the White Paper and Ze’ev Jabotinsky.[1]

Eldad attended the Hebrew Gymnasium Rehavia in Jerusalem from 1956 to 1968, then studied medicine at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine from 1968 to 1974 through the academic-reserve program.[1] After an internship at Shaare Zedek Hospital in 1974–1975, he completed an MD thesis on amniotic membranes as biological dressings.[1]

Eldad specialized in plastic surgery at Shaare Zedek Hospital from 1979 to 1987. His training and research included a 1986 fellowship in the burns unit of Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton, London, and research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Royal Marsden Hospital in England.[1] He worked in the burns unit at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital from 1989 to 1992 and established and directed its burns unit from 1994 to 1996.[1]

In parallel, Eldad served in the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps from 1976 to 1979 as a battalion and brigade physician and deputy regional medical commander in the Shlomo area; in 1983, he served as a divisional physician in Lebanon.[1] His later posts included heading a medical branch in the Surgeon General’s office from 1987 to 1989, serving as Central Command medical commander in 1992, and becoming deputy Surgeon General in 1996.[1] He was appointed Surgeon General in 1997 and held the rank of brigadier general.[1]

Eldad also pursued an academic career. He became a surgery instructor at the Hebrew University’s medical school in 1984, a lecturer in 1989, a senior lecturer in 1994, and a senior associate professor of surgery in 1999.[1] In 2000, he became head of Hadassah Ein Kerem’s plastic surgery department.[1] A 2011 profile described him as professor and chairman of the hospital’s plastic surgery and burns unit, where he treated Arab and Jewish patients.[5]

He founded and chaired the Israeli Burns Association in 1990, represented Israel in international and European burns organizations, and joined the editorial board of the journal Burns in 1992.[1] His awards included the American Burns Association’s Evans Award in 1998 and the Knight of Quality Government award in 2007.[1] A profile also credited him with helping create Israel’s National Skin Bank, which stores skin for burn victims and wartime or casualty situations.[5]

Eldad left hospital work ahead of the 2003 election, joined Moledet, and was placed second on its list; Moledet ran within the National Union slate, where he was seventh.[3] He was elected to the Sixteenth Knesset in 2003 as a National Union representative.[3][9] He chaired the Knesset Ethics Committee and served on the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.[1]

For the 2006 election, Eldad was initially placed sixth on the National Union list, then moved to fifth after challenging his ranking and exchanging places with Uri Ariel.[3] Following the merger of the National Union and National Religious Party, he was eighth on their joint list.[3] The joint list won nine seats, and Eldad entered the Seventeenth Knesset.[10] His roles included service on the labor, welfare and health and state-control committees, and chairing a state-control subcommittee on combating corruption and a caucus against corruption.[1]

In 2005, Eldad opposed the planned disengagement and called for civil disobedience against the evacuation of Jews by Jews.[11] He marched 220 kilometers from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — to Gaza over 13 days to protest the plan, describing the effort as a struggle against what he called a historic injustice.[11] At the February 2006 evacuation of nine structures at Amona, he was injured, sustaining a ligament tear in his right hand and losing consciousness, according to a later profile.[3] Eldad alleged that police had beaten him and that acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had ordered the action for election propaganda; a court dismissed Eldad’s lawsuit against the state in October 2008.[3]

During the Eighteenth Knesset, Eldad also worked across ideological lines with Labor MK Orit Noked. Their acquaintance began during a joint visit to Jonathan Pollard in the United States. They later cooperated on a parliamentary discussion that produced guidance against breast implants for girls under 18, with Eldad citing continuing breast-tissue development and possible autoimmune effects.[12]

Eldad’s political positions were strongly identified with opposition to Palestinian statehood. In a 2011 interview, he argued that a state in what he called Israel’s heartland could bring Hamas to power and threaten Israel, and that the conflict was fundamentally about Israel’s existence rather than principally about occupied territories or settlements.[5] At a 2019 lecture, he argued that Jewish religion and nationality were inseparable and that Israel should remain a Jewish state, linking the question of its Jewish character to issues including the Law of Return.[6]

In November 2008, Eldad announced that he would run at the head of Hatikva in the next Knesset election.[3][13] He said he had rejected a proposed right-wing party because it could not, in his view, serve as a home for nonreligious supporters of the Land of Israel. As an example, he recounted being told that membership could be problematic for a reservist pilot who drove on Shabbat; Eldad said his purpose in joining the National Union had been to protect the Land of Israel, not to create a home for religious Zionism.[13]

Eldad said Hatikva would oppose a Palestinian state and seek to guarantee Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount. He also proposed conditioning eligibility for Knesset elections on completion of military or national service, and described the party as a home for voters disappointed with Likud or opposed to Avigdor Lieberman’s proposals on land swaps and dividing Jerusalem.[13] Hatikva joined the National Union for the 2009 election and became one of its factions.[14] Eldad was placed third on the joint National Union–Moledet list with Tkuma and Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, which won four seats; he entered the Eighteenth Knesset and served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense, Labor, Welfare and Health, and Ethics committees.[3]

The 2009 election was Eldad’s third Knesset election. The National Union elected four members, including Professor Arieh Eldad.[15] In 2012, Eldad and fellow National Union member Michael Ben-Ari opposed an agreement for the party to run jointly with Jewish Home, fearing it would compromise their ideological positions.[16] Hatikva and Eretz Yisrael Shelanu then announced their departure from the alliance and plans to form Otzma LeYisrael.[14]

Eldad and Ben-Ari established Otzma LeYisrael in November 2012, ahead of the 2013 election; the Knesset recognized it as an independent faction on November 19.[3][4] Eldad headed the election list, with Ben-Ari second and Baruch Marzel third, and its launch slogan was “There are no rights without duties.”[17] Eldad described an ideological gap in the right-wing bloc and said, “The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel.”[17] On November 29, after Mahmoud Abbas’s appeal to the UN General Assembly for recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state, Eldad and Ben-Ari burned a Palestinian flag.[3]

Otzma LeYisrael failed to cross the electoral threshold and won no seats in 2013.[4] Reports differ on its vote total: Ynetnews gave 61,825 votes, about 15,000 short of the threshold, while a later Jerusalem Post opinion article reported 66,775 votes, or 1.75%, and a shortfall of about 10,000 votes under the then 2% threshold.[18][19]

Eldad’s political statements and activism extended beyond party campaigns. In 2012, he led activists protesting a Nakba Day ceremony at Tel Aviv University. He called the Nakba “a day of celebration” and said that Israel should celebrate the defeat of its enemies because it enabled the formation of a Jewish state.[20]

At a 2022 World Zionist Organization conference on Jewish Peoplehood and Israel-Diaspora relations, Eldad said there was “no future for the Jewish people in the Diaspora unless they are ultra-Orthodox.” He cited a 70% intermarriage figure for non-Orthodox Jews and predicted that progressive Jewish movements would decline unless they connected to Israel.[21] These were remarks he made at the conference, as reported at the time.[21]

Eldad chaired the Professors’ Circle for Political and Economic Resilience from 2013 to 2015 and began presenting a daily current-affairs program on 103FM in 2013.[1] Later profiles describe him as a regular host of a daily radio program, a public activist, and an author; he has also written a weekly column for Maariv.[21][2] He left the Knesset in 2013 and subsequently worked in media and published books.[7]

Eldad’s writing includes the 543-page Hebrew book דברים שרואים מכאן, cataloged in English as How Things Are Seen from Here, published in 2016.[8] It examines whether Israeli right-wing leaders changed their ideology after taking office, with Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu among its subjects.[8] The title draws on a phrase attributed in the book’s catalog description to Sharon: “Things seen from here are not seen from there,” offered as an explanation for a change in policy after becoming prime minister.[8]

In a 2020 report about animal experiments in Israel’s security establishment, Eldad was identified as a former senior member of the committee approving such experiments during his tenure as chief medical officer. He said that research he approved included work on protecting soldiers from chemical burns and studying responses to biological weapons and nerve gas, as well as a test of the Merkava tank’s ventilation system to assess whether air circulation could intensify a fire after a tank was struck or caught fire.[22]

Eldad’s public career combined specialist medical work, military service, parliamentary politics, and media activity. His documented medical work included directing hospital burns services, teaching and academic appointments, leadership in burns organizations, and involvement in establishing a national skin bank for burn care.[1][5] His Knesset career included committee and anti-corruption roles, while his party activity centered on right-wing and nationalist platforms.[1][3]

His parliamentary career ended with the 2013 election, after which he continued as a radio presenter, columnist, and author.[7][2] In a later profile, Eldad acknowledged that his experience as a practical politician had not been a great success and was described as continuing to advocate for a small ideological vanguard even without a practical majority.[7] At an annual walk in Jerusalem, a crowd reportedly stopped in silence to listen to remarks by Eldad and other public figures.[23]

Several aspects of Eldad’s public record have been politically contentious, including his opposition to Palestinian statehood and his positions on Israeli sovereignty and the Temple Mount.[5][13] His arguments about the Jewish character of the state and the relationship between Jewish religion and nationality have also generated debate.[6] These are his reported political arguments rather than neutral descriptions of settled policy. His 2022 comments about Diaspora Jews and progressive Jewish movements were reported as remarks made at a conference, not as demographic conclusions established by the article reporting them.[21]

A report about Eldad’s treatment of a badly burned young terrorist recounts that he continued providing skin transplants and, when administrators asked him to end the treatment, moved the patient’s bed to the director’s office and threatened a sit-in. This account appeared in a single commentary publication among the sources available here.[24] The account of the 2006 Amona injury also includes Eldad’s allegations about police conduct and political direction; the same profile reports that his lawsuit against the state was dismissed.[3] The different reported 2013 vote totals for Otzma LeYisrael are a discrepancy between published accounts, rather than a single agreed figure.[18][19]