Effi Eitam

Effi Eitam was born on July 25, 1952, at Kibbutz Ein Gev.[1] He earned master's degrees in political science and international relations from the University of Haifa and studied at both the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.[1] An encyclopedia account describes his birthplace as a secular kibbutz.[6]

Eitam's religious journey began in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. He described himself as entirely secular in religious observance before the war and recalled that existential questions raised by his combat experiences set him on a path toward observance.[2] That process matured roughly five years later, when he chose to study at a yeshiva and observe Jewish commandments.[2]

He is married and the father of eight children.[1]

Eitam enlisted in the IDF's Golani Brigade in 1971 and later held a series of senior field commands.[7][1] During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he served as a young officer in the Golani Reconnaissance Unit. He recalled holding a position at Nafah alongside one other soldier and a single bazooka as Syrian forces advanced; he received Israel's Medal of Distinguished Service for the battle.[2][1]

Eitam commanded Sayeret Golani during Operation Entebbe in 1976, the Israeli commando raid at Uganda's Entebbe airport that freed hostages from a hijacked aircraft; Yonatan Netanyahu was killed during the rescue.[1][8] Eitam later commanded an infantry battalion during Operation Litani and an officers' school battalion during the 1982 Lebanon War. During the First Intifada he commanded the Givati Brigade, and his later commands included the Galilee Division.[1][9]

Eitam retired from the IDF around 2000 with the rank of brigadier general. Ynet accounts date his retirement to 2000 and report that it followed his being passed over for promotion to major general.[10][11]

After retiring from the military, Eitam joined the National Religious Party, known in Hebrew as Mafdal. Jewish Virtual Library and Ynet accounts date his selection as party leader to 2002, when he was not yet a Knesset member.[1][11] Encyclopedia.com's leadership list instead dates his term as party leader to 2003–04.[6] He was appointed minister without portfolio in April 2002 and became minister of national infrastructures that September.[1]

Eitam was first elected to the Knesset in the 2003 elections, in which the NRP under his leadership won six seats with 132,370 votes, or 4.2 percent of the total. The election results described its platform as religious Zionism emphasizing army service and the Land of Israel.[12] Eitam then served as minister of housing and construction in the Thirtieth Government.[1][13] The Washington Institute described the NRP as the coalition's strongest advocate of settlements and noted that the Housing Ministry had traditionally aided the settlement movement.[14]

His political profile combined the military credentials of a former brigadier general with a religious-national program emphasizing military service and attachment to the Land of Israel.[12][2]

The defining crisis of Eitam's ministerial career was Ariel Sharon's proposal to evacuate Israeli settlements from Gaza. The proposal initially concerned at least 17 of the territory's 20 Israeli settlements, where approximately 7,500 Israeli settlers lived alongside 1.1 million Palestinians.[15] Eitam said the NRP would leave Sharon's government if such a measure passed the cabinet.[15]

On June 6, 2004, the cabinet voted 14–7 to authorize preparations for a possible Gaza withdrawal, setting March 2005 as the deadline for a final decision rather than immediately ordering an evacuation.[3] Eitam called the vote "a black day for Israel" and said the NRP could not remain in the government.[16] He resigned as housing and construction minister on June 8, 2004, together with NRP deputy minister Yitzhak Levy.[13]

The party was divided over its response. Eitam favored an immediate departure from the coalition, while Social Affairs Minister Zevulun Orlev favored continued dialogue.[16] Eitam and Levy left the NRP in June 2004 and formed a parliamentary group called Religious Zionism.[6] The NRP remained in the government until November 2004, when it also withdrew over the disengagement plan.[6]

In February 2005, Eitam and MK Yitzhak Levy formally launched their new faction at a Jerusalem gathering attended by hundreds of activists.[17] Eitam said he hoped to unite the religious-national parties into a single camp capable of replacing Likud as the dominant force on the Israeli right. NRP faction chairman Zevulun Orlev criticized the split as damaging to the struggle against disengagement.[17] The faction became the Renewed Religious National Zionist Party, later renamed Ahi.[1]

Eitam was among the nine members elected on the National Union–NRP slate in the 2006 elections.[18] Ahi merged with the National Union in 2006, re-established itself as an independent party in 2008, and merged with Likud before the 2009 election.[1] When the NRP joined the National Union, Tkuma, and Moledet to form a consolidated right-wing party in 2008, Eitam, who preferred joining Likud, did not join its list.[19]

Eitam retired from political life rather than contest the 2009 election, after serving in the Knesset from 2003 to 2009.[1][10] In a 2021 interview, he said he was considering a return to public service and characterized his efforts at the time as ideological rather than partisan.[7]

In 2020, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to appoint Eitam chairman of Yad Vashem's directorate, prompting sustained public controversy.[4][20] Critics quoted by Ynet argued that Eitam lacked a public record of Holocaust-related work and that the proposed appointment was politically motivated.[20] The Jerusalem Post reported that 750 Jewish and Holocaust scholars signed a petition opposing his candidacy.[21] Isaac Leks, a supporter of the nomination, pointed to Eitam's values and military record and rejected the contention that the appointment was political.[20]

The debate extended beyond Eitam's qualifications to questions about Holocaust interpretation and commemoration. Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen argued that opponents feared Eitam would restore an understanding of the Holocaust as a unique and unprecedented crime arising from a specific historical and cultural context and directed exclusively at Jews, rather than subsuming it within a universal history of genocide.[4] Yad Vashem historians Dan Michman and Dina Porat responded that the institution combined attention to the Holocaust's particular Jewish character with its broader human significance.[4]

Eitam was not appointed. The government approved Dani Dayan as Yad Vashem chairman in August 2021 after Eitam's nomination had remained in abeyance.[5]

Several episodes in Eitam's career generated significant public controversy. At a 2006 memorial ceremony, he called for the expulsion of most Palestinians from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and for Arab citizens of Israel to be removed from the political system, describing them as a "fifth column" and "traitors."[22] The remarks were later broadcast on Army Radio. Attendees told Ynet that they occupied less than a minute of a speech focused primarily on military matters and that no applause followed them.[22] Arab lawmakers condemned the statements, and MK Mohammad Barakeh called for a criminal investigation.[22]

A U.S. human-rights report later recorded that Eitam had called Israeli Arabs "traitors in the first degree."[23] Eitam subsequently told the Associated Press that he did not recall making the reported remarks.[10] In a 2021 interview, he said Arab Israelis should possess full human, civil, and legal rights but should not participate in government or executive decision-making.[7]

A separate controversy concerned a 1988 incident during the First Intifada. Ynet News reported that troops under Eitam's command beat two Palestinian suspects, one of whom later died, and that two soldiers convicted of assault said they had been following orders.[10] A separate Ynet report quoted MK Ahmad Tibi as saying that an IDF chief had reprimanded Eitam for excessive force against civilians during the intifada, but the report did not independently corroborate or detail Tibi's allegation.[24]