Ari Rath is an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n-Israeli journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and writer

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Rath was born in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 grew up there. After the Anschluss

Anschluss

The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

he came through a Kindertransport

Kindertransport

Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig...

as a thirteen-year-old boy to Palestine. As one of the foeunders of the kibbutz

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

 Hamadia

Hamadia

Hamadia is a kibbutz in the Beit She'an Valley, just north of Beit She'an in northern Israel. It belongs to the Valley of Springs Regional Council.The kibbutz was first founded in 1939 as part of the Tower and stockade movement, but it was abandoned...

 he lived there for 16 years and studied contemporary history and economics. After turning to journalism he became editor in 1975 and in 1979 chief editor of the Jerusalem Post. In this capacity he belonged together with Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres

GCMG is the ninth President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years...

 and Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....

 to the inner circle of friends of David Ben Gurion. After finishing work at the Jerusalem Post in 1989 he was a freelance writer and taught at the University of Potsdam

University of Potsdam

The University of Potsdam is a German university, situated across four campuses in Potsdam, Brandenburg, including the New Palace of Sanssouci and the Park Babelsberg.- Profile :...

 and was news editor of the on-line journal Partners for Peacehttp://www.partnersforpeace.org/. Ari is a founding member of the Next Century Foundation

Next Century Foundation

The Next Century Foundation is an elite organisation that operates in various conflict zones across the globe. Originally established in 1990 to provide a forum for off-the-record discussions between Palestinians and Israelis, in addition to maintaining its original focus on the Middle East Peace...

, a second track group working for peace and reconciliation.

Rath is still an advocate for a peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians.

Awards

For his merits of Israeli-German/Austrian dialog he was awarded several honors among others: in 2005 he won the German Bundesverdienstkreuz

Bundesverdienstkreuz

The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...

; his latest award for his "dialog between Vienna and Israel" was the Goldenes Ehrenzeichen (golden badge of honor) of the city of Vienna.

In 2005, Ari Rath, along with some British and Arab journalists, received a Special Prize in the British House of Lords in the shape of an olive tree from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting

International Council for Press and Broadcasting

The council is a subsidiary body of the Next Century Foundation, an organisation which deals primarily with conflict resolution issues and holds an annual International Media Awards in London...

in recognition of his achievement and tireless work for rapprochement and peace. This was in lieu of the Peace for Media awards, which were not given that year.

Works

• Rath, Ari a.o. Auf dem Weg zum Frieden. Artikel und Essays aus fünf Jahrzehnten, Berlin 2005.
• Rath, Ari; Frenkel, Erwin. Front page Israel. Major events 1932-1986 as reflected in the front pages of the Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem 1986, ISBN 0-933503-09-1.

External links

• Ari Rath
• Ari Rath Becomes Austrian Again Austrian Press Agency, 6 May 2005
• Image of Ari Rath