Shlomo Lahat, former Tel Aviv mayor, dies at 87
Former Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo Lahat, who presided over the city’s transformation into a vibrant and open urban center, died Wednesday in a Tel Aviv hospital, his family said. He was 87.
Israeli media said Lahat had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years.
Born in Berlin in 1927, Lahat moved with his parents to Palestine in 1933. As a teenager he joined the Haganah military group and rose to the rank of major general in the Israeli army. He went into politics in 1973 and that year was elected Tel Aviv mayor, remaining in office until 1993.
Known popularly as “Chich,” Lahat was formally affiliated with the hard-line Likud Party, but he became a strong supporter of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the main force behind Israeli peace efforts with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist in Tel Aviv in 1995 at a pro-peace rally that Lahat had helped to organize.
Lahat is widely credited with inventing the slogan “the city that never stops” to describe Tel Aviv, a 105-year-old community distinguished by Bauhaus architecture and a laid-back, Mediterranean-style culture.
Under his leadership, Tel Aviv took on a racy, cosmopolitan aura, which helps differentiate it from the much more restrained and religiously oriented Jerusalem.
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