Yuli Tamir

MKs


Date of birth = Birth date and age|1954|2|26|df=y
Year of Aliyah =
Date of death =
Knesset(s) = 16th, 17th (current)
Party = Labour
Former parties =
Gov't roles = Minister of Education
Minister of Immigrant Absorption
Minister of Science, Culture & Sport*
*Whilst outside the Knesset

Yael "Yuli" Tamir ( _he. יולי תמיר, born 26 February 1954) is an Israeli academic, politician and former Minister of Immigrant Absorption. She is now Minister of Education, representing the Labour Party.

Between 1972-1974, she served in Aman's 848 Unit, and during the Yom Kippur War, she served as an officer in an outpost on the Sinai. Tamir received a BA in Biology and an MA in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford. During 1989-1999, she was a philosophy lecturer in Tel Aviv University and a research fellow in the Hartman Institute of Jerusalem, Princeton and Harvard universities.

Tamir was one of the founders of Peace Now (1978), and between 1980-1985, she was an activist for Ratz. From 1998-1999, she was chairwoman of the Israeli Association for Civil Rights. From 1995, she became active in the Labour party. Although Tamir failed to win election to the Knesset in the 1999 election, she was appointed Minister of Immigrant Absorption by Ehud Barak. She was elected to the Knesset in the following 2003 election, and served on the finance, constitutional, law and order, public input, and culture and sport committees. She also served on the investigatory parliamentary committee into government corruption.

She was elected to the Knesset again in the 2006 elections, and as of May 4, 2006, is the Education Minister in Ehud Olmert's Kadima-led coalition government. She was also acting Science, Culture and Sport minister following Ophir Pines-Paz's resignation in November 2006 until March 2007 when Raleb Majadele was appointed.

Tamir has been a controversial figure in Israel. As Minister of Education, she approved a history textbook for Arab children, wherein Israel's War of Independence is described as the "nakba" - the disaster. This led the opposition leaders to demand her dismissal, while Member of Knesset Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), a former director general of the Education Ministry, said the "wretched" decision "is not justified from a pedagogic standpoint and is not a matter for political intervention." Tamir defended her act as a way of giving "expression to [the Arab's] feelings as well." [ [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/884882.html Likud and NRP leaders call for education minister's dismissal] "Haaretz" July 23, 2007.]

Tamir has expressed her multiculturalism by suggesting that the common Western dismay at clitoridectomy - insofar as it is not based on feminist suppositions - is smug and patronizing, merely reflecting patriarchal fear of women's lack of sexual enjoyment. [Yael Tamir: [http://bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Tamir.html Hands Off Clitoridectomy. What our revulsion reveals about ourselves] "Boston Review" Summer 1996.]

elected publications

*

References

External links