1. Mattityahu Peled was a member of the General Staff during the Six-Day War of 1967, and headed the Arabic Language and Literature Department of Tel Aviv University.
28 Facts About Mattityahu Peled
1. 2.
Mattityahu Peled served in the Palmach's Jerusalem Platoon together with Yitzhak Rabin, with whom Peled was to maintain lifelong contact.
3.
In 1946 Mattityahu Peled started law studies in London, but the outbreak of civil war, following the Partition of Palestine brought him back to the military.
4.
Mattityahu Peled served as the military commander of Gaza during the half-year Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, which followed and extended the Suez Crisis in 1956.
5.
At the time when the government of PM Levi Eshkol seemed to be hesitating whether or not to launch a pre-emptive attack on the Egyptian armies concentrating in the Sinai, Mattityahu Peled was among a group of generals who demanded that the government start a war, and threatened to resign if it did not.
6.
Mattityahu Peled stated that having been in charge of the Supply Division, he was aware that prolonged mobilization, with the IDF reserves comprising a significant percentage of Israel's overall workforce, would severely cripple the country's economy, which was already suffering from a severe, years-long recession.
7.
Mattityahu Peled reiterated that he had conceived of this as a purely military operation to counter a military threat, and that he had no idea that Israel would maintain occupation of the territories captured for decades afterwards, or establish settlements designed to effect their annexation and permanently change their demographic character.
8.
Mattityahu Peled had opposed these tendencies as soon as they appeared after the war.
9.
Mattityahu Peled had already studied Arabic literature during his military service, and soon after being discharged he completed and submitted to University of California, Los Angeles his Ph.
10.
Subsequently, Mattityahu Peled was one of the founders of the Arabic Literature Department at Tel Aviv University, which he headed for several years, and soon gained a reputation as a serious and innovative scholar in his chosen field.
11.
Mattityahu Peled joined the Israeli Labor Party, though holding no office on its behalf, and in the 1973 elections was among a group of prominent doves who called upon voters to vote for Labor, despite its faults, rather than for the more radical small left-wing parties.
12.
Mattityahu Peled later reversed this position, becoming a leading member in several such left-wing parties in succession, and on numerous occasions expressing sharp criticism of Labor.
13.
In 1975 Mattityahu Peled was one of the founders of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, together with Uri Avnery, Yaakov Arnon, Yossi Amitai, Amos Keinan, Aryeh Eliav and others.
14.
Mattityahu Peled did approach his old comrade in arms Yitzhak Rabin, then on his first term as Prime Minister of Israel.
15.
Mattityahu Peled offered to brief Rabin on his talks with the Palestinians, and Rabin consented.
16.
Mattityahu Peled always believed that Oslo was at least in part a late flowering of the seeds he and his friends had sown in the 1970s.
17.
Thereupon Mattityahu Peled, always known as a forthright speaker, accused Cohen of being "a war criminal who bombards a civilian population".
18.
Mattityahu Peled soon gained a reputation as one of the most serious and industrious of Israel's parliamentarians, whose speeches on the Knesset floor "resembled academic lectures".
19.
Mattityahu Peled lost his seat in the 1988 elections when the party was reduced to one seat.
20.
Mattityahu Peled dedicated his last years to advancing a dialogue of mutual recognition and respect between Israelis and Palestinians, and to research of Arabic literature.
21.
Mattityahu Peled was the first Israeli professor of Arabic literature who introduced studies of Palestinian literature into the academic curriculum.
22.
Mattityahu Peled published numerous political articles in Israeli and international media and translated several pieces of Arabic literature to Hebrew.
23.
In 1994, seventy years of robust health were broken when Mattityahu Peled felt sharp pains that turned out to be the sign of an incurable liver cancer.
24.
Mattityahu Peled's funeral brought together a unique combination of radical peace activists with former generals and senior officers.
25.
Mattityahu Peled was married and had two sons and two daughters.
26.
One daughter, Nurit Mattityahu Peled-Elhanan, is a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
27.
Mattityahu Peled's family, including a short biography of Peled, is mentioned in Colum McCann's 2020 novel Apeirogon.
28.
One son, Miko Mattityahu Peled, is a peace activist and lives in San Diego.