| Biography | Yehuda Avner was an Israeli prime ministerial advisor, diplomat, and author. He served as Speechwriter and Secretary to Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Levi Eshkol, and as Advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, and Shimon Peres. Avner served in diplomatic positions at the Israeli Consulate in New York, and the Israeli Embassy to the US in Washington, DC, and as Israel's Ambassador to Britain, Ireland and Australia. In 2010, he turned his insider stories about Israeli politics and diplomacy into a bestselling book, The Prime Ministers, which subsequently became the basis for a two-part documentary movie. In 2015, his novel, The Ambassador, which Avner co-authored with thriller writer Matt Rees, was posthumously published.
He was active in the religious Zionist youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and was committed to helping build a Jewish state. In The Prime Ministers, he recalls the anti-Semitism he saw and experienced in Britain, including anti-Semitic rioting in the aftermath of the Sergeants affair. Upon high school graduation, he moved to Jerusalem, then part of British Mandatory Palestine in November 1947. Avner fought in the Siege of Jerusalem during Israel's 1948 War of Independence. In 1949, he was amongst the founders of Kibbutz Lavi, a religious kibbutz located in Israel's Galilee region. |