Dov Yosef

Dov Joseph (Hebrew: דב יוסף, 27 May 1899 – 7 January 1980) was an Israeli statesman. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, he was in charge of Jerusalem. He later held ministerial positions in nine Israeli governments.^[1]

Biography

Bernard Joseph (later Dov Joseph) was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He attended McGill University, Université Laval, and the University of London, qualifying as an attorney. Joseph founded the Canadian Young Judaea Zionist youth movement in 1917, and immigrated to Palestine in 1918 with the Canadian Jewish Legion which he helped organize. After the end of World War I, Yosef worked as an attorney in Mandatory Palestine.

In December 1947 the Jewish Agency and Ben Gurion appointed him head of the

He retained his seat again in the 1955 elections, but was not appointed to a ministerial post. He lost his seat in the 1959 elections, and never regained MK status. However, during the fifth Knesset he was appointed Minister of Justice by Ben-Gurion despite being outside the Knesset. When Ben-Gurion was replaced by Eshkol he remained Justice Minister, but was not reappointed after the 1965 elections.

Joseph caused a political scandal when he published in 1960 an autobiographic book, "The Faithful City", which focused on the siege of Jerusalem in 1948. He claimed that David Shaltiel, the commander of Jerusalem gave him a wrong picture of the situation in the city, causing the fall of the old city.

Streets in Jerusalem, Netanya and Be'er Sheva are named after him

References

External links

• Dov Yosef on the Knesset website
• The Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem site. Office of Dov Joseph and Louis Arieh Pincus (S60)