Moshe Arens

Moshe Arens, born in 1925, Israeli politician, born in Kovno, Lithuania. Brought to the United States as a child, Arens was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. He emigrated to Israel in 1948 to join the Irgun, an underground movement that violently opposed British rule in Palestine. From 1957 to 1962 Arens taught aeronautical engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. As vice president of the Israel Aircraft Industry after 1962, he directed the development of the Kfir and Lavi fighter planes. He was awarded the Israel Defense Prize in 1971. Active in the right-wing Herut party, he was elected to the Knesset, Israel’s legislature, in 1974 and was later named chairman of its defense and foreign relations committee (1977). In 1980 he refused the post of defense minister because of his opposition to the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.

Arens was named ambassador to the United States in 1982 and was a vocal advocate of the Israeli right. Later that year he became defense minister. In 1986 he was given responsibility for Israeli-Arab affairs. Arens was considered a pragmatic hawk. He believed that Israel must keep the territories occupied after the 1967 Six-Day War, and he opposed any contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1988 he was made foreign minister under Israel’s new coalition government. Both realistic and dispassionate, he endorsed strong ties with the United States and accepted U.S. secretary of state James Baker’s five-point peace proposal (1989), although “with reservations.” From 1990 to 1992 Arens was minister of defense in the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir.