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When Moshe was 1 year old, his family moved from Yazd to Tehran, where
his father, Shmuel Katsav, worked as a janitor at the Jewish Koresh
School, which belonged to the Alliance network. In August 1951, when
Moshe was 5, his family immigrated to Israel. They initially lived in
Shaar Haaliya, near Haifa (Moshe received the scar on his face when the
family lived there). The young family (his father was 30, his mother 22,
and his sister, Shoshana, 1) subsequently moved to the transit camp at
Castina, which later changed its name to Kiryat Malachi.
During the severe flooding of the winter of 1951, the tents of the
immigrant camp collapsed. His two-month old baby brother Zion died.
(Another brother, Aharon, had died in Iran, in Yezd). Moshe was
evacuated, with other children, to moshavs in the area. Moshe was
evacuated to Kfar Bilu; his parents didn’t know where he had been moved.
His worried parents finally found him living with the Sharir family in
Kfar Bilu.
The Katsav family lived in a tent in the transit camp for 2 years,
experiencing distress, unemployment, and scarce supplies. One day, when
Moshe was playing among the tents, Ms. Rivka Gover, known as Mother of
Sons, suggested that he study, and that day he began attending first
grade in the Haachim School in Kiryat Malachi. Two years later, the
family moved to a one-and-a-half-room hut, which had its own private
toilet, albeit at some distance from the hut.
After 4 years of living in the hut, the family moved to a permanent
semi-detached house with two and a half rooms.
Moshe Katsav first visited Jerusalem when Yanait Ben Zvi, wife of the
then President, invited children from transit camps who had excelled in
reading public library foundation books to visit the President’s House.
During this visit, Moshe was received by the President’s wife and was
embraced by Israel’s second President, Yitzhak Ben Zvi.
Moshe Katsav graduated from Kiryat Malachi’s primary school and decided
to attend high school at the BenShemen Youth Village, where his studies
profoundly affected him. In addition to his studies, Moshe specialized
in agricultural work, milking cows and working in fruit tree
plantations. He subsequently attended Beer-Tuvia High School. He
finished his final examinations and was then drafted into the Israeli
Defense Forces, serving in the Signal Corps in the Armored Corps
Headquarters. Moshe was the eldest son of a family of nine children. His
father was employed as a laborer in a linen thread factory and, later,
as a watchman at the Marbak beef-butchering factory. To help support
this large family, Moshe was given a lot of leave during his military
service; he worked mainly in construction.
When Moshe was discharged from the Israel Defense Forces, he worked as a
clerk in Bank Hapoalim and as an assistant in the Volcani Agricultural
Research Institute. At that time, he also worked as a journalist at the
Yedioth Aharonoth daily newspaper and served as the President of Bnei
Brith Youth. There he met his wife Gila, a descendant of the Gur
Hassids; her parents were from Poland and the Ukraine.
He saved money to finance his studies at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, where he studied economics and history. He was the first
student at the University from Kiryat Malachi.
As a student, he began his political activity and was elected as
chairman of the Gachal student cell at the Hebrew University in 1969.
During his studies, at age 24, he ran successfully for mayor of Kiryat
Malachi, becoming the youngest mayor in the country.
Moshe participated in the Six-Day War at Sharm-A-Sheikh. In the Yom
Kippur War, he served both in General Avraham Eden’s division and under
Brigade Commander Brigadier General Natke Nir. Moshe was among the
forces that crossed the Suez Canal, reaching the outskirts of Suez City.
In 1977, he ran successfully for the ninth Knesset in the Likud Party.
Thus, Moshe became the first person raised in a development town to be
elected to the Knesset. In the ninth Knesset, he held two concurrent
posts: Knesset member and head of a council. In the tenth Knesset, Prime
Minister Menahem Begin decided to appoint him Deputy Minister of
Construction and Housing and in charge, on behalf of the government, of
the government's Neighborhood Restoration Project. The Neighborhood
Restoration Project was undertaken jointly by the Government and
Diaspora Jewry to restore poorer neighborhoods and to uplift thousands
of the country's citizens . This project, which brought about a social
revolution in Israel, encompassed 84 poor neighborhoods in Israel and
involved 240 Jewish communities throughout the world. In the eleventh
Knesset, Moshe was elected Minister of Labor and Social Welfare in the
government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. In this position he brought
about the ratification by the government and the Knesset of the most
up-to-date social laws, such as the Law of Nursing Care Insurance, which
makes it possible to care for the aged who are not independent. This
resulted in a substantial increase in the budget for the needy.
In the twelfth Knesset, Moshe was appointed Minister of Transport and a
member of the Ministerial Committee for Security Affairs. During this
period the transportation infrastructure developed greatly as did
Israeli shipping and the El Al company. Moshe Katsav was the only
Minister who started and completed the privatisation of government
companies under his authority as Minister of Transport. In this
position, he brought about airline relations with countries with which
Israel did not have diplomatic relations, such as countries in Africa,
Asia and Eastern Europe.
In the thirteenth Knesset, in 1992, upon being relegated to the
opposition, Moshe was elected as Chairman of the Likud Party in the
Knesset and Chairman of the Israel-China Friendship Association. In the
fourteenth Knesset, he was elected Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of
Tourism, and the Minister for Israeli Arabs.
Mr. Moshe Katsav served as the Eighth President of the State of Israel
from 2000-2007 and resigned towards the end of his term as President.
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