Avraham "Avrum" Burg (; born 19 January 1955) is an Israeli author, politician and businessman. He was a member of the Knesset, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Speaker of the Knesset, and Interim President of Israel. He was the first Speaker of the Knesset to have been born in Israel after its declaration of independence in 1948. A member of the Labor Party when he was a member of the Knesset, Burg announced in January 2015 that he had joined Hadash.
From the 2000s onwards he has expressed views described as post-Zionist, a label he self-identified with in 2011. He is in favor of Israel negotiating with Hamas, and has called to abandon Herzelian Zionism (calling it a scaffolding that should be removed) in favor of a form of Cultural Zionism, also citing the civic nationalism of France as an example to follow.
Early life
He was born and raised in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood. His father was Yosef Burg, a German-born Israeli politician and longtime government minister for the National Religious Party. His mother was Rivka (née Slonim) who was born in Hebron and a survivor of the 1929 Hebron massacre.
In the Israel Defense Forces, Burg served as a platoon commander with the rank of lieutenant in the paratroopers brigade. He graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a degree in the social sciences.
Burg married Yael, and they had six children. He lives in Nataf, a rural community, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Political career
Burg was an activist in left-wing organizations and the Peace Now movement. He was injured in the grenade attack on a Peace Now demonstration in Jerusalem in February 1983 which killed Emil Grunzweig. In 1985, he served as advisor on Diaspora affairs to Prime Minister Shimon Peres. In 1988, he was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Alignment.
In 1992, when the Alignment became the Labor Party, he was reelected to Knesset. He served as chairman of the Education Committee.
In 1995, he was appointed Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, and resigned from the Knesset. As head of the Jewish Agency, he worked to recover Jewish property lost during The Holocaust and in the transfer of approximately half a million predominantly Jewish citizens from the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union) to Israel. After his term as chairman of the Jewish Agency, Burg continued to use a car and driver provided by the agency for 10 years. When it was cut he sued to continue to receive these benefits, but lost the court case, with the judge saying, "Burg didn't explain the fact that he also uses the car for his own personal business."
In 1999, Burg returned to domestic politics, and was elected to the Knesset on Ehud Barak's One Israel list (an alliance of Labor, Meimad and Gesher). Although Prime Minister Barak backed another candidate, Burg was elected Speaker of the Knesset, a position he held until early 2003. In his capacity as speaker of the Knesset he served as interim President of Israel for 20 days, from 12 July until 1 August 2000 when the presidency was vacant following Ezer Weizman's resignation.
Following Barak's defeat in the 2001 election for Prime Minister and his subsequent resignation, Burg ran for the Labor Party leadership, and won amid accusations of voter fraud. In a revote he lost to Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Burg called for cancellation of this second vote, a move supported by Labor Party chairman Ra'anan Cohen. Nevertheless, Burg retained his seat in the Knesset in the 2003 elections.
Also in 2003, Burg published an article in Yedioth Ahronoth in which he declared, "Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism."
After retirement
In 2004, Burg resigned from the Knesset and public life. He became a businessman. In 2007, a Burg-led consortium won the rights to purchase Ashot Ashkelon Industries, but the sale was cancelled by the Israeli government. Burg's attorney said that if it was cancelled since the government wanted to sell it together with Israel Military Industries (IMI), "we may bid for IMI." There had also been a review by the State Comptroller and the Israeli Police "into suspicions that [Burg] was a straw-man for Ian Nigel Davis and Aviv Algor. (Davis and Algor have been indicted in a securities case, on charges of fraudulently obtaining the approval of Middle East Tube Ltd. shareholders for a 250,000-shekel monthly management fee.) The prosecutor closed the file against Burg for lack of evidence."