September 23, 2003
Simcha Dinitz, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 1973 to 1978, dies at the age of 74.
Considered one of Israel’s greatest diplomats, Dinitz began his career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1958. During his time as ambassador to the United States, Dinitz played a key role in helping Israel secure weapons from the United States during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. Henry Kissinger, who was the U.S. secretary of state at the time, said of Dinitz, “He was a superb representative of his country, whose role in saving his country in the 1973 war has never been adequately appreciated.”
From 1984 he served in the Knesset until he resigned in 1988. In 1986 he served as the chairman of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency for Israel. During his time there, more than 1 million Jews emigrated from Russia. In 1991, he coordinated Operation Solomon, the one-day airlift that brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
In 1995, he resigned after two theft charges were brought against him. He said they were accounting errors, not criminal actions. He was acquitted of one and convicted of the other, but it was overturned on appeal.
Here is a memorandum of a conversation July 3, 1973, among Kissinger, Dinitz, Brent Scowcroft and Mordechai Shalev.
The photo shows Prime Minister Golda Meir meeting with Kissinger (left) and Simcha Dinitz (right) in February 1973.
