Shlomo Hillel

Shlomo Hillel (, 9 April 1923 – 8 February 2021) was an Iraqi-born Israeli diplomat and politician who served as Speaker of the Knesset, Minister of Police, Minister of Internal Affairs, and ambassador to several countries in Africa. As an agent of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he arranged the mass airlift of Iraqi Jews to Israel known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Biography Born to a Mizrahi Jewish family in Baghdad, in Mandatory Iraq, Hillel immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1934 at the age of eleven. After graduating from the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv, he underwent agricultural training in kibbutz Degania Alef, and later Pardes Hana. Hillel was secretary of a Hebrew Scouts group that later established Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael. In 1945, Hillel and his colleagues worked at a Haganah munitions factory disguised as a laundry facility in the basement of the Ayalon Institute in Rehovot. He studied political science, economics and public administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He married Temima, with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter. He lived in Ramat Denya, Jerusalem. Hillel's daughter Hagar was a pioneer in the research of Jewish journalism in the Arab world. He died on 8 February 2021. Zionist activism Operation Michaelberg