Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens will be honored at the Israel Hayom Forum for US-Israel Relations this Thursday.
The Israel Hayom Group will hold its first conference at the Davidson Center in Jerusalem, with former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley as the keynote speaker.
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The forum will celebrate the strong bond between Washington and Jerusalem and will deal with a host of subjects, including the bilateral economic relations and trade, cultural ties and technological cooperation.
Arens, a prominent Likud member who served in various ministerial positions and as Israel's ambassador to the United States, died earlier this year.
Arens was born in Lithuania in 1925 and moved to the United States in 1939. After serving in the US Army, he moved to the Jewish state shortly after its founding in the late 1940s.
Entering the Knesset in 1974, he quickly became a prominent Likud lawmaker and served in various high-profile positions in Israeli politics.
Arens's ally early in his career was fellow Likud MK Yitzhak Shamir (who would go on to serve four terms as prime minister). Both shared a hawkish ideological view and opposition to the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. A year later, when then Prime Minister Menachem Begin offered Arens the defense portfolio, he refused, saying he didn't want to be in charge of dismantling Jewish settlements in the Sinai Peninsula as part of the peace treaty.
In 1982, he was tapped for the position of ambassador to the US, and in 1983 he became defense minister after Ariel Sharon had to step down over his conduct in Operation Peace for the Galilee. Arens is credited for revamping the Israel Defense Forces by creating a joint command for the ground forces.
As defense minister, he also pushed forward the IAI Lavi project, which would have allowed Israel to manufacture its own fighter jets. Although the project was ultimately terminated before completion, it helped Israel obtain important technological know-how.
He would go on to serve as a minister without portfolio (in charge of minority affairs) and then foreign minister before returning to the Defense Ministry in 1990. As defense minister during the first Gulf War in 1991, he pushed for more active Israeli involvement, with the goal of stopping Iraq's missile attacks on Israeli territory.
Arens studied aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ultimately became a professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He was also awarded the Israel Defense Prize.
