Labor Knesset Member and former Defense minister Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer announced on Thursday he is quitting 30 years of being in politics.
He was one of the more colorful and popular leaders in the eternally fractured Labor party. He also was the darling of the Israel Radio, known by the misnomer of the Voice of Israel, which sometimes interviewed him at least once a week when there was no one else around to promote as a political leader who might be able to lead a campaign against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Ben-Eliezer wrote Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein that he had been contemplating his resignation for a long time and that health problems led him to quit now, before the March elections.
He was a former IDF commander and was Defense Minister in the Sharon administration unity government.