Yehuda Avner
AUTHOR

Yehuda Avner

Biographies & Memoirs
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Yehuda Avner (1928–2015) was an Israeli prime ministerial advisor and diplomat. He left his native Manchester, England for British Mandatory Palestine in 1947, fought in Israel's War of Independence in 1948, and was among the founders of Kibbutz Lavi in the Galilee in 1949. He joined the Israeli Foreign Service in 1958, and for the next 25 years, worked for five Israeli prime ministers: as speechwriter and secretary to Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir, and adviser to Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, and Shimon Peres. He had a special affinity for Prime Minister Begin, who called him “my Shakespeare.” Yehuda Avner also served in diplomatic positions at the Israeli Consulate in New York, and the Israeli Embassy to the United States in Washington, DC. In 1983, he was appointed Israel’s Ambassador to Britain and Ireland, and in 1992, Israel’s Ambassador to Australia. As a top political aide and diplomat, Yehuda Avner was privy to the inside workings of Israel's prime minister’s office, present for major decision-making moments, and involved in high-level international negotiations. In 2010, Yehuda Avner turned these experiences into a bestselling book, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, which subsequently became the basis for a two-part documentary movie produced by Academy Award-winning Moriah Films: The Prime Ministers I: The Pioneers, and The Prime Ministers II: Soldiers and Peacemakers. Yehuda Avner narrated and starred in the movies, and Hollywood actors Christoph Waltz, Michael Douglas, Sandra Bullock, and Leonard Nimoy provided the voices of Israel’s prime ministers. Yehuda Avner was a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and a member of the Ambassadorial Appointments Committee. In 1995, he was honored by Bar-Ilan University with the establishment of the Yehuda Avner Chair in Religion and Politics. In 2012, he received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University, and presented the university’s commencement keynote address. In the final months of his life, Yehuda Avner collaborated with author Matt Rees on The Ambassador, an alternate history novel about Israel and Nazi Germany.
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