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Foreign press doyen Eric Silver, 73 By Anshel Pfeffer Eric Silver, doyen of the foreign press corps in Jerusalem, passed away on 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 to Israel with his wife Bridget and their three daughters. Advertisement Silver was born in Leeds in 1935. 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 The Guardian, which sent him to cover the Six-Day War. During the 1960s, he was also the Jerusalem Post's correspondent in London. In 1972, he was sent to Israel as a correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer, where he spent 11 years covering all the major events from the Yom Kippur War to the Camp David accords and the first Lebanon War. In the 1980s, he was The Guardian's correspondent in Israel, and in 1987, he resigned from the paper and moved to Israel. He described himself as "a failed Zionist," but former Haaretz editor David Landau, a close friend, said yesterday that "his decision with Bridget to leave The Guardian, where he was justifiably a highly respected correspondent and make his home and professional life in Israel, was an act of pristine Zionism. "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," said Landau. "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 connection to the country - he saw himself as a man of Jerusalem. He lived on Haneviim Street in a house filled with antiques and Israeli and Jewish art, and printed "Street of the Prophets" on his business cards. When he returned to Israel, a colleague warned him that the "story is dying out" - and six months later, the first intifada broke out. For the next 20 years he 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 his books 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 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 against Israel and managed to pass a motion opposing it in the London freelance branch. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Kafka's heir Many believe Hava Hoffe is in possession of an important literary treasure. Press doyen Eric Silver, veteran of the foreign press corps in Jerusalem, dies aged 73.

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