Yuval Steinitz

Yuval Steinitz ( he, יוּבַל שְׁטַיְינִיץ; born 10 April 1958) is an Israeli politician who currently serves as a member of the Knesset for the Likud party. He also held several ministerial posts, including Minister of Finance, Minister of Intelligence, Minister of Strategic Affairs and Minister of Energy. Steinitz holds a PhD in philosophy and was a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa.

Life and career

Born and raised in Moshav Ramot HaShavim, 30 km north of Tel Aviv, he is the eldest of four children. His father, Dan, is an engineer and his late mother, Mina, was a teacher of literature and philosophy. Steinitz served in the IDF as a soldier in Golani infantry Brigade (1977–1980). He sustained a leg injury during a battle with the Syrian army when he served as a reservist, during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Academic work

After three years of compulsory military service, he was awarded BA and MA in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with honors. His doctoral thesis ''From a Rational Point of View'' was completed at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. The thesis examined the possibility of logical arguments for the existence of God, and the rule of logical reasoning in modern science. In 1993 Steinitz was awarded the Alon Scholarship, the most prestigious award for outstanding young doctors in Israel, which led to a teaching position at the University of Haifa. Steinitz was chosen two years in a row as "The outstanding Lecturer" in philosophy and the philosophy of science. In 1996 he was appointed Senior Lecturer (the Israeli parallel of a tenured assistant professor).

Steinitz has published several philosophy books. The first, ''Invitation to Philosophy'' (1987), became a number one best-selling philosophy book in Israeli history, and was printed in 60 editions. Another book, ''A Logical-Scientific Missile to God and Back'' became a best seller as well and was printed in 17 editions. He also published philosophical papers in academic journals including ''The Philosophical Quarterly'', ''American Philosophical Quarterly'', ''International Philosophical Quarterly'', '' Cambridge Religious Studies'', and '' The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly Iyyun''.

Political career

Steinitz's political involvement began in the early 1980s when he joined the ' Peace Now' movement as a young student. He was injured in his leg (the same leg again) during an anti-government rally in Jerusalem in 1983, when a right-wing extremist hurled a hand-grenade into the crowd, killing peace activist Emil Grunzweig.'With all guns blazing'
Haaretz
His reservations about Oslo Accords signed with the Palestinians, together with his concerns regarding the massive Egyptian military buildup despite the peace treaty with Israel, led him to shift to the right in 1995 and to publicly support the Likud Party.

15th Knesset (1999–2003)

In 1999 he was elected to the 15th Knesset on the Likud list. A year later he became a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the chairman of its "Subcommittee on Defense Planning and Policy" and a member of the Constitution and Law Committee.

In 1999–2004, he served as president of Israel's Media Watch.

16th Knesset (2003–2006)

After being reelected to the 16th Knesset, he became chairman of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, chairman of the "Subcommittee on Intelligence and Secret Service" and co-chairman of the "Joint Committee on Defense with the US Congress", which he established and chaired together with Senator Jon Kyl.
Right at the beginning of his tenure, Steinitz declared that the committee will cease to be "The House of Lords" and will exercise "a very proactive and effective parliamentary oversight of Israel defense establishment". This new approach has led him to a series of clashes with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, with Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz and with IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon.

A few months later, he established the "Investigation Committee for the Israeli Intelligence following the Iraq War" and appointed himself as its chairman. This was followed later on by the establishment of similar committees in the United States and the United Kingdom. The committee report in 2004 sharply criticized the Israeli Intelligence Community for misleading alerting reports, following its failure to detect the non-existence of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles in Iraq before the war. Additionally, the report also criticized the failure of the Israeli intelligence to detect the Libyan nuclear program on time. The committee's public report included a number of specific recommendations:
* Consider removing SIGINT Unit 8200 from the IDF's and transform it into a civilian SIGINT authority.
* Accelerate the development of the Israeli spy satellites program, operated together by the IDF and the Mossad.
* Providing a special program of advanced academic studies for young intelligence officers, that will include, among other areas, some philosophical background. This recommendation was implemented with the establishment of the BA and MA " Havatzalot Program".
* Appointing a special intelligence secretary to the Prime Minister with the same status as the military secretary.

Along with the above, Steinitz established a special Public Committee led by Prof. Amnon Rubinstein to examine the means to improve parliamentary oversight of the defense establishment. As committee chairman often pointed to the massive Egyptian military buildup with modern American weapons. In addition, Steinitz expressed a great Support for developing the Israeli Navy into a significant strategic arm and published several articles on this issue at the Maarachot Military Journal.

Unlike Netanyahu, Steinitz did support Sharon's 2005 plan to withdraw from Gaza. Yet, at the same time, he led a parliamentary battle against delivering the Philadelphi Corridor to Egypt, claiming that the Egyptians deliberately ignore Palestinian arms smuggling through the Sinai Peninsula. He also argued that the Israel-Egypt Philadelphi agreement might erode the demilitarization of Sinai.

In addition, he called for a rapid " Defensive Shield" Operation in Gaza, prior to the Israeli withdrawal, in order to destroy the Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets industry.

In 2018, the Israeli censorship allowed the publication of the secret documents that Steinitz sent to Prime Minister Sharon and the heads of the security services and intelligence organizations – in which he indicated in the summer of 2004 the possible existence of a secret nuclear project in Syria. It turned out that Steinitz and the sub-committee he chaired were the first in Israel and in the entire Western world, who have uncovered the military nuclear project in Syria, in absolute contrast to the intelligence agencies in Israel and the world. In the summer of 2004, Steinitz asked the Mossad and the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate to present to the sub-committee of Intelligence and Secret Services a special plan to uncovering the likely secret nuclear project in Syria. While the military intelligence ignored the warnings, the Mossad did, in fact, change its action plan according to Steinitz's report, and after three years the Mossad found proof of the existence of a nuclear plant in the process of being built in the Syrian desert, which led to the destruction of the plant by the Israeli Air Force in 2007.

17th Knesset (2006–2009)

Steinitz was reelected to the 17th Knesset in 2006 when the Likud lost its leading position to Kadima. As an opposition MK became again a member on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and as the chairman of the "Subcommittee on Defense Readiness". Steinitz was Netanyahu's candidate for chairman of the " World Likud" in June 2006, but he lost to MK Danny Danon.

18th Knesset (2009–2013)

After being reelected to the 18th Knesset, and following the Likud 2009 victory, Steinitz was appointed Minister of Finance and a member of the inner Security Cabinet by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

He was the first Finance Minister of Israel to submit to the Knesset a two-year budget, instead of the until-then customary one-year budget. This move generated some controversy, with some accusing it of decreasing government transparency and others praising it for its greater efficiency. Since then, Israel continued with the biennial budget and became the first country in the west to institute such a policy change. In 2009, most experts in the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Finance opposed Steinitz's move, but today the biennial budget had a wide approval among the officials in the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Finance.

19th Knesset (2013–2015)

In the 19th Knesset

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases