| Biography | Eliahu Elath (16 July 1903, Snovsk, Russian Empire 21 June 1990) was an Israeli diplomat and Orientalist. He immigrated from Russia to Palestine in 1924, and spent a decade in Beirut as a student and journalist. From 1934 to 1945 he worked in the foreign relations section of the Jewish Agency, which eventually evolved into the government of Israel. That same year he came to the United States as the agency's representative in Washington, D.C., and from 1948 to 1950 he served as the first Israeli ambassador to the United States. Following that appointment he served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1950 to 1959, and later as the president of Hebrew University from 1962 to 1968. |