Ben Porat. 1927-2007
Photo: Israel Sun
Journalist Yeshayahu Ben Porat dies at 80
A prominent figure in the Israeli media and one of Yedioth Ahronoth's senior commentators, Ben Porat succumbed to cancer at 80. 'He was an icon,' says Yossi Beilin
Yeshayahu Ben Porat, one of the Israel's veteran journalists, died of cancer Saturday. He was 80-years-old.
Ben Porat was also a prominent figure in Yedioth Ahronoth, and one of the newspaper's senior commentators. "He wasn't just a well known figure in the paper, he was a one-man-establishment… he broke too many stories to count and was an outstanding journalist," said his long-time colleague Motti Kirschenbaum on Sunday.
Born in 1927 in Vienna, Ben Porat came to Israel in 1945 and started his journalistic career in the 1950s, when Yedioth Ahronoth sent him to be the paper's Paris corresponded. Ben Porat soon found himself working for Paris Match and Europe 1 Radio, and he became one of the leading media figures in Paris in those days.
"He was a broad-minded person of extreme journalistic integrity. His death is a serious loss to Israeli journalism and I am very saddened by it," MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al), who was interviewed by Ben Porat in the 1990s, told Ynet.
"Ben Porat's name was synonymous with the modern and bohemian Israel of the 1960s," said Meretz-Yahad Chairman MK Yossi Beilin, adding "he was a brilliant, curious intelligent man and a gifted interviewer. He was an icon."
Yeshayahu Ben Porat's funeral will be held in Kibbutz Einat on Monday.
