Yehuda Avner dies at 86: Tributes for former Ambassador

Tributes have been paid to Israel’s first UK- born ambassador after he passed away aged 86. 

Yehuda Avner also served as advisor to prime ministers including Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres.

His diplomatic posts included as ambassador to the UK in the 1980s and Australia.

The Manchester-born Avner’s experiences led to his penning the acclaimed memoir The Prime Ministers. 

Israel’s Ambassador in the UK, Daniel Taub told the Jewish News: “Yehuda Avner will be deeply missed as a consummate diplomat who represented Israel and a remarkable author who chronicled its history. When I was a student here in the UK, he was the first Israeli Ambassador I came to know, and in the years since I have been truly privileged to have enjoyed his guidance and friendship.”

Former UK Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks said:
“The passing of Yehuda Avner is a great loss to the whole Jewish people.”

“Now that Yehuda Avner’s life of dedicated service has come to an end, the highest accolade I can think to say of him is that he was an eved medinat Yisrael v’am Yisrael, a servant of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”

He was a “wordsmith par excellence” and “deployed his words and his skills to great success on behalf of Israeli prime ministers.

“He will be sorely missed and we wish his family chayim aruchim, a long and blessed life.”

His son-in-law, David Sable, released a statement: saying it was with “deep sadness that I share with you the passing of Ambassador Yehuda Avner, Begin’s Shakespeare.”

Sable called him “an articulate champion of the Jewish people and the State, who took his last breaths, at home, in his beloved Jerusalem.”

He paid tribute to “a true servant of the Jewish people…in his role as advisor to the Generation of Legendary Leaders of Israel he was never political, never took personal gain, never shied from conflict”.