Arye Zimuki, a veteran journalist who held senior positions in Zionist organizations in Israel while working full time as a journalist, died yesterday and was buried here today. His funeral was attended by President Chaim Herzog, Cabinet ministers, Knesset members and government and Zionist officials of all political persuasions.
Zimuki, 65, was the senior political correspondent of Yediot Achronot, Israel’s largest circulation daily, and he worked there until the day of his death. He succumbed to a heart attack while watching the classic Yiddish play, “Rosinkes mit Mandlin” at the Jerusalem Theater.
In addition to his duties for Yediot Achronot, he was chairman of the Zionist Council in Israel, an associate member of the World Zionist Organization Executive and charman of the World Federation of Jewish Journalists.
Zimuki — his original name was Rosinko — was born in Koval, Poland and immigrated to Israel in 1937 at the age of 18. He studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was active in Haganah, the pre-State Jewish defense force.
Later, Zimuki joined the British police in Jerusalem and became active in Achdut Avodah, one of the political forebears of Israel’s Labor Party. He remained with the police after the State was established and became its press spokesman, everntually changing roles to become a reporter. He worked for the newspapers Davar and Lamerhav before joining Yediot Achronot.
‘A JEW AND A ZIONIST IN HIS ENTIRE SOUL’
At his funeral today, Leon Dulzin, chairman of the WZO and Jewish Agency Executives, eulogized Zimuki as “a Jew and a Zionist in his entire soul, a man of Jerusalem who carried with him the heritage of East European Jewry.”
Deputy Premier and Housing Minister David Levy of Likud, noted that as a journalist and politician, Zimuki represented the human element in a brutal and often cynical arena. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party, a former Prime Minister, praised Zimuki as a journalist who used his skills not to condemn but to inform.
“Personally, I lost a friend. I knew that in time of need I could rely on him, or rather, I knew that he would come to me, stand by me, support me and encourage me,” Rabin said.
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