Victor Shem-Tov
Encyclopedia
Victor Shem-Tov is a former Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i politician who held several ministerial portfolios in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Biography

Born in Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 to a family of Samokov
Samokov
Samokov is a town in Sofia Province in the southwest of Bulgaria. It is situated in a kettle between the mountains Rila and Vitosha, 55 kilometres from the capital Sofia...

 goldsmiths, Shem-Tov mostly lived in the capital Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

 and was a member of the Maccabi Youth movement. He made aliyah
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...

 in 1939, the same year in which he joined Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...

. He became a member of the Jerusalem Workers' Council in 1946, and was chairman of the Bulgarian Immigrants Association between 1949 and 1950.

In 1961 he served on the Histadrut
Histadrut
HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael , known as the Histadrut, is Israel's organization of trade unions. Established in December 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine, it became one of the most powerful institutions of the State of Israel.-History:The Histadrut was founded in...

's actions committee. In the same year he was elected to the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...

 on Mapam
Mapam
Mapam was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.-History:Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party was originally Marxist-Zionist in its outlook and represented...

's list. He retained his seat in the 1965 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1965
Elections for the sixth Knesset were held in Israel on 1 November 1965. Voter turnout was 85.9%.-Background:Prior to the elections, two major alliances were formed; Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda united to form the Alignment, whilst Herut and the Liberal Party had formed the Gahal alliance towards the end...

, and was also voted onto Jerusalem's City Council. During the Knesset term Mapam joined the Alignment
Alignment (political party)
The Alignment was an alliance of the major left-wing parties in Israel between the 1960s and 1990s. It was established in 1965 as an alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda but was dissolved three years later when the two parties and Rafi formally merged into the Israeli Labor Party...

 alliance.

Despite losing his seat in the 1969 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1969
Elections for the seventh Knesset were held in Israel on 28 October 1969. Voter turnout was 81.7%.-Results:¹ Meir Avizohar defected from the National List to the Alignment² Avner Shaki left the National Religious Party and remained a single MK...

, Shem-Tov was appointed Minister without Portfolio
Minister without Portfolio
A minister without portfolio is either a government minister with no specific responsibilities or a minister that does not head a particular ministry...

 in Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....

's government
Fifteenth government of Israel
The fifteenth government of Israel was formed by Golda Meir on 15 December 1969 following the October elections. The government was a continuation of the national unity government formed during the previous Knesset, and consisted of the Alignment, Gahal, the National Religious Party, the...

 in December 1969. In July 1970 he became Minister of Health
Health Minister of Israel
The Ministry of Health is a ministry in the Israeli government. The current Minister of Health is Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud.There is occasionally a Deputy Minister of Health...

. He also failed to win a seat in the 1973 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1973
The Elections for the eighth Knesset were held on 31 December 1973. Voter turnout was 78.6%.-Results:1 Aryeh Eliav left the Alignment and merged with Ratz to form Ya'ad - Civil Rights Movement...

, but retained his place in the cabinet. When Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....

 formed a new government in June 1974 following Meir's resignation, he was also appointed Minister of Welfare, though he held the post only until October that year.

After Likud
Likud
Likud is the major center-right political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin in an alliance with several right-wing and liberal parties. Likud's victory in the 1977 elections was a major turning point in the country's political history, marking the first time the left had...

 won the 1977 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1977
The Elections for the ninth Knesset were held on 17 May 1977. For the first time in Israeli political history, the right-wing, led by Likud, won the election, ending almost 30 years of rule by the left-wing Alignment and its predecessor, Mapai...

, Shem-Tov lost his place in the cabinet, and also failed to win a Knesset seat. However, he did win a seat in the 1981 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1981
Elections for the tenth Knesset were held in Israel on 30 June 1981. Despite last minute polls suggesting a victory for Shimon Peres's Alignment, Menachem Begin's Likud won by just one seat...

, voted back into the Knesset on the Alignment's list. After being re-elected in 1984, Mapam broke away from the Alignment to sit as an independent party. Shem-Tov resigned from the Knesset on 15 March 1988, and was replaced by Gadi Yatziv
Gadi Yatziv
Professor Gadi Yatziv was an Israeli academic and politician who briefly served as a member of the Knesset for Mapam in 1988.-Biography:Born in kibbutz Na'an during the Mandate era, Yatziv was educated at the Hebrew University Secondary School and was a member of the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed youth...

.

External links

  • Wars of Victor Shemtov Standart
    Standart (newspaper)
    Standart is a Bulgarian newspaper founded in 1992. Chairman of the board of editors is Todor Batkov. The online edition has an English language section.-External links:**...

    , 6 June 2006
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