Moshe Arens, 91; Israel statesman, defense minister

Moshe Arens, an aeronautical engineer turned Israeli statesman who served three times as defense minister, sought to forge closer ties with the United States and became a mentor, patron and sometime critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, died Jan. 7 at his home in Savyon, near Tel Aviv. He was 93.

Arens died in his sleep, according to Israeli news reports, which did not give a precise cause. “There was no greater patriot than him,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Cool and professorial, with an analytical bent and gentlemanly demeanor, Arens was one of the last survivors of his country’s founding generation. A former member of the Irgun, the paramilitary group that fought for Israeli independence under British rule, he was both a rightist and a liberal idealist, a champion of equal rights for Arab Israelis who also advocated for the annexation of “Judea and Samaria,” his term for the Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

But Arens, who had studied at MIT and Caltech and spoke with a polished American accent, become a favorite of Republican legislators and worked closely with members of the Ronald Reagan administration, appearing frequently on American news programs to argue on behalf of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982.

When defense minister Ariel Sharon was forced to resign one year later, in the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, Arens took his place. He went on to oversee sweeping reforms that established a new command structure and missile system, leading to the beginning of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

After his initial one-year stint as defense minister – considered the country’s second-highest office – Arens held the position again in the early 1990s, when he unsuccessfully called for a ground operation to knock out Iraqi Scud missiles during the Persian Gulf War, and served as defense minister for a third time in 1999.

“Misha was one of the most important ministers of defense the state of Israel ever had,” President Reuven Rivlin said in a tribute. “He was not a commander or a general, but a devoted man of learning who toiled day and night for the security of Israel and its citizens.”

Indeed, Arens insisted he was more interested in designing jet planes than in navigating the turbulence of Israeli politics. Before launching his political career in the 1970s, he played a key role in the development of Israel’s aerospace industry, teaching some of the country’s first aeronautical engineering students as a professor at the Technion, a leading research university in Haifa.

He also served as vice president for engineering at Israel Aircraft Industries, where he shepherded the development of new missile systems and laid the groundwork for the Lavie, a high-tech jet fighter that was developed using $1.5 billion of U.S. aid money – funding that Arens was widely credited with obtaining.