Nessim Gaon, instrumental in Egypt peace, dies at 100
A significant influence on social welfare and education
Swiss-Jewish financier, international businessman and philanthropist Nessim Gaon passed away this week in Geneva. He was 100. Gaon had a significant influence on several of Israel’s social welfare and education programs and was a persuasive force in developing relations between Israel and Egypt.
In Israel, Gaon was perhaps best known as president of the World Sephardi Federation, an organization that he revived in 1971. The federation’s aim was to improve Sephardi education in the Diaspora and to boost educational and developmental assistance to Israel’s Sephardim – Jews whose roots are from Spain and Portugal.
Gaon, whose family originated in Turkey, was born in British-ruled Sudan where his father was an official in the Sudanese government. During World War II, Nessim joined the British Army in Cairo, then joined the family business in Sudan. He moved to Geneva in 1957, where he built up an import-export business that would eventually become the global Noga real estate and commodity empire. The company owned a chain of hotels, including Geneva’s Noga Hilton.
Gaon’s behind-the-scenes role on the diplomatic front remains largely unknown. Living in Egypt and a close friend of late prime minister Menachem Begin, Gaon served as a conduit and mediator between Egypt and Israel. The negotiations would eventually culminate in the 1977 rapprochement between the two countries.
When Begin flew to Ismailia, Egypt, in 1977, where peace talks were getting underway, Gaon was part of the entourage. By the end of the year, the American-brokered Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel were signed.
In a 1989 Jerusalem Post interview, Gaon maintained that he had persuaded Begin to change his opinion of the Egyptians.
“I told him that if an Arab country made a peace agreement with Israel, it would respect that agreement. Nobody in Israel believed that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat sincerely wanted peace,” he said. “Lack of trust created a gap. What was needed was a little push to get over that gap.”
More recently, the Sudanese-born Gaon also played an important role in facilitating relations between Israel and Sudan, with an emphasis on economic ties.
In his Facebook post, President Isaac Herzog wrote, “Nessim was proud of Middle Eastern Jewry, but sadly never got to visit the Jewish
cemetery in Sudan he had restored.”
Herzog’s oldest brother, Joel, is married to Gaon’s daughter Marguerite.
Distressed about the situation in Israel in which its disadvantaged were in large part from the Middle East and North Africa, Gaon became a driving force behind Project Renewal. The project was launched in the 1970s to fund the rehabilitation of slum neighborhoods and improve education and social services. He was a relentless fundraiser and promoter of the program, which – unlike urban renewal projects in other countries – had a direct connection with Jewish communities abroad.
Another of Gaon’s significant social contributions – and one still remembered by thousands of Israelis – was the university scholarship fund for leadership he established. The aim was to give young Sephardi residents of developing towns and disadvantaged neighborhoods the opportunity to study at university, where they would take leadership courses. During its 20 years of operation, there were some 20,000 recipients of the scholarship program, including many who today are mayors, Knesset members and ministers in the government.