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Eric Silver
Last update - 00:00 16/07/2008
Veteran Mideast journalist Eric Silver dies aged 73
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Obituary, Eric Silver 

Eric Silver, doyen of the foreign press corps in Jerusalem, passed away Tuesday night at the age of 73.

Silver, who lived in Jerusalem for the last two decades, was a foreign correspondent for The Guardian before deciding to move permanently with his wife Bridget and their three daughters to Israel.

Silver was born in Leeds in 1935 and after studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, he began working as a journalist for the Harrogate Herald and The Northern Echo. In 1960 he joined The Guardian, which sent him to cover the 1967 Six-Day War. During the 1960s he was also the Jerusalem Post's correspondent in London.
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In 1972, he was sent to Israel as correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer, and covered all the major events from the Yom Kippur War to the Israel-Egypt peace deal and the first Lebanon War. He resigned in 1987 to settle himself in Israel permanently.

He described himself as "a failed Zionist," but former Haaretz editor and close friend David Landau said Wednesday that this was not the case.

"His decision with Bridget to leave The Guardian, where he was justifiably a highly respected correspondent, and to make his home and professional life in Israel, was an act of pristine Zionism," Landau said.

"He was a world class journalist with a first class career, and it is rare for a man at such a stage of his life to make such a stark choice and to throw in his lot with Israel. He was not starry eyed. I remember him covering the Yom Kippur War, where he saw the Israeli leadership at its most embarrassing weakness. He knew exactly the drawbacks of living in Israel."

Silver had a romantic attachment to the country. He saw himself as a man of Jerusalem, and lived in the capital's Hanevi'im Street in a house filled with antiques and Israeli and Jewish art. His address on his business cards was written in its English translation, "Street of the Prophets".

Upon returning to Israel, a colleague warned him that the "story is dying out." Six months later, the first Intifada erupted.

For the next 20 years Silver wrote extensively as a freelance reporter for The Independent, Time, Maclean's Magazine, The Statesman of India, The Jewish Chronicle and The Jerusalem Report. Among the books he wrote were a biography of Menachem Begin and "The book of the just: the unsung heroes who rescued Jews from Hitler."

Never an apologist, Silver wrote extensively on the injustices suffered by Palestinians, as he did on the concerns of Israeli society. Conny Mus, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel (a post that Silver also held in 1975), recalled that he was always adamant against restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on journalists.

At the same time, as a lifelong member of the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ), he fought last year against the NUJ's boycott resolution of Israel and managed to pass a motion opposing it in the London freelance branch.

Silver's colleague at The Independent, Donald McIntyre, said Wednesday that "Eric was an absolutely ideal colleague, superbly professional, patient, good humored, terrific fun and unfailingly generous with his deep knowledge and insight about the Middle East, especially for somebody like me who came with practically no knowledge at all. I will miss him very much and not only because I won't be able to call him up at all hours for his wise counsel as I repeatedly used to.
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  3.   Really, Tova? 01:00  |  Joseph 17/07/08
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