Warned of danger to Israel’s democracy
ZEEV STERNHELL 1935-2020
JERUSALEM — Zeev Sternhell, a prominent Israeli academic and expert in the study of fascism who issued dire warnings about the state of Israeli democracy, died Sunday. He was 85.
Mr. Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and an acclaimed professor of political science at Hebrew University, was an internationally recognized expert and author of several books on fascism and ultranationalism.
Hebrew University, which announced Mr. Sternhell’s death, did not disclose the cause.
A longtime peace activist, Mr. Sternhell was an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and an opponent of Israel’s settler movement.
In 2008, he was awarded the country’s prestigious Israel Prize, despite the petitions of Jewish West Bank settlers to deny him the honor. The same year, a U.S.-born religious nationalist, Jack Teitel, targeted him for his dovish positions, and Mr. Sternhell was wounded by a pipe bomb placed outside his Jerusalem home. An Israeli court handed Teitel two life sentences in 2013 for the murder of two Palestinians and the attempted murder of several others, including Mr. Sternhell.
Mr. Sternhell was born in Przemysl, Poland, in 1935. His father, a soldier in the Polish Army, was killed in World War II. His mother and sister were murdered by the Nazis. He survived under an assumed, Catholic identity living with relatives. He immigrated to Israel in 1951 and served as an officer in the Israeli military during the 1967 Mideast war.
After Israel’s 2014 war with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, Mr. Sternhell told the Haaretz newspaper that “Israeli democracy has become increasingly eroded, until it reached a new nadir in the current war.”