Meir Vilner

Meir Vilner (born Bar Kovner; 23 October 1918 – 5 June 2003) was an Israeli communist politician and Jewish leader of the Communist Party of Israel (Maki), at one time a powerful force in the country. He was the youngest and last living signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948.
Early life
Born in Vilnius, during the short-lived Kingdom of Lithuania, Vilner's political life began as the leader of the Marxist-oriented socialist-Zionist group HaShomer HaTzair (Young Guard). However, he soon grew disenchanted by what he viewed as a tendency in Zionist groups to dream of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, rather than change their current situation. Thus, he started working for the banned Polish Communist Partynow under the pseudonym Meir Vilneruntil 1938, when he left Poland to go to British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. Most of his family who stayed behind was murdered in the Holocaust. In Palestine, Vilner studied history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Political career
Palestine Communist Party
During the last years of the British mandate, Vilner became disenchanted with mainstream Zionist politicians, claiming that Jewish anti-Arab racism was comparable to the antisemitism he experienced in Vilnius. He joined the Palestine Communist Party (PCP), which accepted both Arabs and Jews as members, and initially opposed plans to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. In March 1946, Vilner testified to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, claiming that partition would economic development in the region, strengthen the dependency of both states on outside aid and widen the gulf between Arabs and Jews. However, he subsequently changed his mind and supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine after the Soviet Union's position on partition changed in the same year to one of support.
On May 14, 1948, Vilner participated in the proclamation ceremony of the State of Israel and co-signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence on behalf of the PCP. Along with other PCP members, Vilner stressed the neccesity of upholding the declaration's promises to implement United Nations resolutions which called for a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and uphold civil and political rights for all Israeli citizens.
As a member of the Knesset
In 1949, he was elected to the Knesset as a member of Maki. He resigned from the Knesset in December 1959, six weeks after the 1959 elections, but was re-elected in 1961. However, he resigned again two months after the 1961 elections.
As the Jewish leader of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), 95% of whose members were Arabs, he rejected Zionism, publicized the Israeli nuclear weapons program in 1963, and opposed the imposition of martial rule on Israeli Arabs (imposed in 1949, it was lifted in 1966).
In 1965 Vilner and several other Maki members broke away from the party to form the new party Rakah following disagreements about the Soviet Union's increasingly anti-Israel stance (Vilner was on the USSR's side), and was elected to the Knesset on the new party's list in the 1965 elections.
On 5 June 1967, Vilner was the sole Jewish deputy (joined only by fellow Communist Party of Israel deputy Tawfik Toubi) to speak out in the Knesset against the Six-Day War. Calling that day the darkest in Israel's history, Vilner demanded an immediate halt to the Israeli invasion of Arab-occupied lands. Vilner stressed that there was no other way to solve the conflict between Israel and its neighbors but mutual recognition of the national rights of Israelis and Arabs, including the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and independent statehood. On 15 October, he was badly wounded by a member of the right-wing party Gahal.
Rakah became part of Hadash before the 1977 elections, and Vilner remained an MK until 1990 when he resigned as part of a seat rotation agreement, making him the third longest serving after Tawfik Toubi and Shimon Peres.
Soviet ties
Vilner's Soviet loyalist line was highly appreciated by the USSR; in 1978 he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples. He did not accept perestroika and regarded the fall of communism in the USSR as a coup.
Personal life
He was married to Esther Vilenska, another Israeli communist politician but divorced later, after having two sons together. His cousin Abba Kovner was a well-known Israeli poet and partisan resistance leader during the Holocaust.
References
External links
1918 births
2003 deaths
Politicians from Vilnius
Lithuanian Jews
Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
Signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence
Maki (political party) leaders
Maki (historical political party) politicians
Hadash politicians
Members of the 1st Knesset (1949–1951)
Members of the 2nd Knesset (1951–1955)
Members of the 3rd Knesset (1955–1959)
Members of the 4th Knesset (1959–1961)
Members of the 5th Knesset (1961–1965)
Members of the 6th Knesset (1965–1969)
Members of the 7th Knesset (1969–1974)
Members of the 8th Knesset (1974–1977)
Members of the 9th Knesset (1977–1981)
Members of the 10th Knesset (1981–1984)
Members of the 11th Knesset (1984–1988)
Members of the 12th Knesset (1988–1992)
Jewish socialists
Burials at Yarkon Cemetery