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Ilan Halevi (; ; born Georges Alain Albert in France; 12 October 1943 – 10 July 2013) was a France-Palestinians journalist, politician and pro-Palestinian activist. He was one of the very few high-ranking Jewish members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Halevi served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Palestinian government and the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as a member of Fatah Revolutionary Council.
He was a member of the Palestinian delegation in the 1991–93 negotiations in Madrid and Washington, and was Assistant Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Palestinian Government. "Ilan Halevi" at Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Writing in both French and English, he was also a novelist and the author of non-fiction books. His publications include The Crossing (1964), Face à la guerre (2003), and Allers-retours (2005).
He is also known by other names, such as Alain Albert; Alan Albert; Georges Levin.
Halevi joined the Palestinian resistance movement and Fatah in particular after the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, and subsequently became a prominent member of the PLO. He was the PLO's representative in Europe and to the Socialist International since 1983, former PLO vice-minister of Foreign minister, and participated in that capacity in the Madrid Conference of 1991. He was also a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, elected in 2009,Elhanan Miller, "Palestinians: Yes to Jews, no to settlers in our state", The Times of Israel, 27 January 2014. and served as an adviser to Yasser Arafat.Elior Levy, "Arafat's Jewish-Palestinian adviser passes away", Ynetnews, 10 July 2013. "United Nations International NGO Meeting and European NGO Symposium on the Question of Palestine", Palais des Nations, Geneva, 29 August–1 September 1994. .
According to Hanan Ashrawi (in This Side of Peace, 1996), in the early 1970s, Halevi was a member of Ma'avak (Struggle), a "small, radical Anti-Zionism group". In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and subsequent shift of Palestinian activism into the Occupied Territories, he switched his activity to groups which included Israelis and Palestinians working together against the occupation, and helped secure permission for Bashir Barghouti, a Palestinian activist and member of the Jordanian Communist Party's governing council, to return to the West Bank.
Halevi was a critic of Zionism and wrote several books on the subject. He was a founding member of the Revue des Études palestiniennes ( Palestinian Studies Review; 1981–2008). Halevi lived in Paris, France, and the West Bank (his apartment in Ramallah was destroyed during Operation Rampart in 2002), and described himself as "100% Jewish and 100% Arab."Marina da Silva, "Aller retours" review, Le Monde diplomatique, July 2005, p. 26. His 2005 book Allers-retours has been called "a fictionalized autobiography", and was described in a review as "an immense and confusing collage populated by more than four hundred characters, some real, others inspired by real people, still others totally fictional (a table of characters specifies the fictional status of each one and recalls who he is in the story and possibly what his links are with other characters). With a bit of luck and if you are attentive, you will then hear, in the middle of this concert, a voice that will whisper to you both hot and cold, infinite belonging and exile, hope and doubt, laughter and tears, back and forth: it is there, the autobiographical truth. Finally, perhaps?"
In a 2011 interview, Halevi said: "My father fought against the Nazi occupation of France as a Communist. I follow in the tradition of my parents in the fight for freedom and justice, even for oppressed Jews. Given a second chance, I would live my life exactly the same way. In my 45 years as a member of the PLO, I have always been accepted as a Jew."Igal Avidan, "Interview with the Jewish Palestinian Politician Ilan Halevi | With One Foot in the UN", Qantara.de, 6 December 2011. In The Jerusalem Quarterly he was characterised as "a true revolutionary internationalist".
For his role in support of the Palestinian struggle, Halevi was awarded the Medal of Distinction by President Mahmoud Abbas.Lazar Berman, "Ilan Halevi, Jewish senior PLO member, dies at 70", The Times of Israel, 10 July 2013.
Halevi's last book, Islamophobie et judéophobie. L'effet miroir, written in the final months of his life, was posthumously published in 2015, and in 2016, a collection of his essays and columns, entitled Du souvenir, du mensonge et de l'oubli: Chroniques palestiniennes, was produced in tribute to him by Actes Sud in collaboration with the Institute of Palestine Studies.
In April 2019, it was announced that through an initiative of President Abbas a new street in the city of Al-Bireh would be named in honour of Ilan Halevi, a decision described by Hanan Ashrawi as "a tribute to a person of courage and principle".Adam Rasgon, "West Bank city to name a street after late Jewish member of Fatah", Times of Israel, 30 April 2019. "Palestinians to name occupied West Bank street after Jewish man", The National, 30 April 2019.
He was a gifted jazz musician, who learned English from American musicians in France.
Literary beginnings
In the early 1960s, writing as "Alan Albert", he had work published in the literary journals Les Temps modernes and Présence Africaine, notably discussing both the Algerian war of independence and the system of racial oppression in the American South in his 1962 essay "“Study in Brown (II): De la Mentalité Coloniale".Allyson Tadjer, "Triangulating Racism: French and Francophone African Reactions to the African American Freedom Movement (1954-1968)"
/ref> With Ellen Wright, widow of African-American writer Richard Wright, as his literary agent, Halevi had his first novel, The Crossing, published in 1964 in the United States, under the name Alain Albert. It was favourably reviewed, described by Lillian Smith in The Saturday Review as "a brilliant, mind-smacking account of a young man's journey from nowhere to hell....a fresh way of looking at the multileveled agony of the walled-in young."Lillian Smith, "From Nowhere to the End of Night", The Saturday Review, 4 April 1964, pp. 39–40.
Political life
, Nabeel Shaath, Halevi and Moustafa Ajouz|left]]Following visits to Africa, including to Mali and Algeria, in 1965, at the age of 22, Halevi moved to Israel.According to his brother Marc Albert, in the Independent obituary: "When he went to Israel, he obtained a passport with the testimony of a Yemenite residing there – the reason that this origin is sometimes given as his." He is quoted as having said: "I came to Israel because in Algeria I discovered the importance of the Palestinian problem. I sat there in coffee houses, I heard people, I spoke with intellectuals and I understood that the Palestinian question preoccupies the people of the Arab world. It is really in the center of their obsessions. I decided I want to study this reality up close and from the inside…I wanted to study the Israeli reality."Ofer Aderet, "Ilan Halevi, Jewish member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, dies in Paris", Haaretz, 10 July 2013, quoting Nitza Erel in Matzpen – Conscience and Fantasy (2010).
Death and legacy
Halevi died in Clichy, France, on 10 July 2013 at the age of 69.Denis Sieffert, "La mort d’Ilan Halevi", Politis.fr, 10 July 2013.Emmanuel Riondé, "La mort d’Ilan Halevi - Disparition d’une grande figure du mouvement national palestinien" , Regards.fr, 11 July 2013.Jean-Pierre Perrin, "Ilan Halevi, l'âme en paix", Libération, 10 July 2013. His funeral took place in Paris at the crematorium of Père Lachaise Cemetery.Houria Bouteldja, "Repose en Paix cher Ilan Halevi", Journal de zine BENSRHIR, 14 July 2013.
Private life
Halevi was married four times, to Giliane Defort (divorced; one son, who died in 2002), Hava (a daughter and a son), Catherine Lévy (a daughter and a son), and Kirsten Maas (a son).
Writings
Books
Selected articles
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1943 Births, 2013 Deaths, 20th-century French Historians, 20th-century French Jews, 20th-century French Journalists, 20th-century French Male Writers, 20th-century French Non-fiction Writers, 20th-century French Novelists, 21st-century French Historians, 21st-century French Journalists, 21st-century French Non-fiction Writers, 21st-century French Novelists, Fatah Members, French Emigrants To Israel, French Male Journalists, French Male Novelists, French Political Writers, French Socialists, Jewish French Activists For Palestinian Solidarity, French Activists For Palestinian Solidarity, Jewish French Anti-zionists, Jewish Israeli Activists For Palestinian Solidarity, Israeli Activists For Palestinian Solidarity, Jewish Israeli Anti-zionists, Jewish Socialists, Palestine Liberation Organization Members, Palestinian Jews, People From Lyon
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