Biography of Avraham Burg
Former speaker of the Knesset
and prominent Israeli peace activist
On December 1, 2003, Avraham Burg and a group of Israeli and Palestinian civic leaders signed The Geneva Accord, a proposal that, if implemented, would resolve some of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and pave the way towards ending decades of bloodshed.
While defending Israel’s right to protect its citizens, Burg is a straightforward realist: “Whoever wants a full democracy with a Jewish majority cannot hold onto the entire land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, because it is a land that has people of another nation with different national aspirations.”
Born and raised in Israel, Burg is the son of a Holocaust survivor and former head of the National Religious Party. Now in his 40’s [in 2004], Burg is a senior member of the Israeli Labor Party and one of the most paradoxical—he is an Orthodox Jew in a very secular party, and he is religiously observant but champions the separation of church and state.
Despite having grown up at the heart of the religious Zionist movement (representing the West Bank settlers), Burg’s long record of political activism pushed him to adopt a liberal, reconciliatory approach to the Middle Eastern conflict: “All of my life I’ve been an activist of the peace camp in Israel. I’m ready to go a very, very long way, of acceptance, of compromising, of dialogue.”
While participating in a peace rally against the war in Lebanon in 1983, Burg was wounded by a grenade that killed a fellow activist. His rage against the current state of affairs convinced him to get involved and make a difference. By the mid-1980s, he was Shimon Peres’ advisor on Diaspora Affairs and in 1988 was elected to the Knesset. He left the Knesset in 1995 to head the Jewish Agency for Israel. Under his leadership, the Jewish Agency oversaw the immigration to Israel of over half a million Jews.
In 1999, at age 44, Burg was elected Speaker of the 15th Knesset, becoming its youngest speaker ever. His most important priority was “to assert a hands-on role for Parliament in the peace effort.” In a bold move that captivated national and international audiences alike, he became the first Speaker to invite his Palestinian counterpart to address the Parliament.
