Yael Lotan (writer)

Lotan was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1935, the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Eliav (1909–1974), an Israeli journalist and diplomat, a member of the Revisionist Zionism movement and editor of the "HaMashkif" newspaper, who became a member of the social democratic Mapai party, just before the state was founded. She traveled with her parents to Argentina on a mission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1953. A year later she went to study in London and lived in Golders Green, where she married Maurice Stoppi, a Jewish-English engineer.[1]

In 1958 she moved with her husband to Jamaica. In 1960 she published her first book, "The Other Eye", a novel written in English, published in London by Peter Davies publishing.[1]

In 1965 she divorced Stoppi and moved to the United States, where she married Loyle Hairston, an African-American writer who was a trade union activist, a leader of New York postal workers.[1]

In 1970 she returned to Israel with her two children. Yael had a bachelor's degree in education, and studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and Communication Studies in New York City. In the 1970s, she edited the quarterly for art, literature and science, "Ariel", which was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' information quarterly. At the end of 1979, it was decided not to renew her employment contract. And she went on to edit "New Outlook", which was an Israeli political magazine in English, owned by "Al HaMishmar". In the 1980s, she edited the literary supplement of the newspaper "Al Hamishmar" and the literary pages of the weekly "Ketrat Rashit".[1]

In 1981, she published the story of the life of Amos Orion, an Israeli criminal who was convicted in the 1960s for murder, and the circumstances of his own murder were widely publicized. She began writing the book while he was still alive, before he murdered in July 1980.[1]

On November 6, 1986, she met in Romania, as part of a delegation of about 20 people, with Palestine Liberation Organization members, and as a result was prosecuted, about a year later, along with Reuven Kaminer, Latif Dori and Eliezer Feiler, for violating the so-called "Meetings Law", which banned contact between Israelis and representatives of a "terrorist organization".[2] The Ramla Magistrate's Court sentenced them to 18 months in prison, of which six months in practice. After hearing the sentence they stated that:" We did not expect such a punishment, this is a draconian verdict. We have never harmed state security. We have tried to promote peace and we're treat like criminals. We did not break the law, but held talks for the advancement of peace". Their appeal to the district court on the conviction and sentence was rejected, but on appeal to the Supreme Court, their sentence was reduced to a fine of NIS 1,000 each.[1]

From 1989 to 1993 she lived in London, writing and translating in Hebrew and English. Since 1994, she was a regular contributor to the Palestine–Israel Journal[3]

Lotan was active in the "Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear-free Middle East".[4] and assisted Mordechai Vanunu after his release from prison. On May 22, 2004, she conducted an interview with Vanunu for the Sunday Times and the BBC, to legally circumvent Vanunu's restrictions on speaking to foreign journalists. However, a few days later, the Shin Bet arrested the British journalist Peter Hounam, a reporter for the Sunday Times, and detained at the Ben-Gurion Airport a reporter for the BBC, Chris Mitchell, who made the film about Vanunu and confiscated the recordings.[5]

Lotan translated fiction and non-fiction from Hebrew into English, including the books of Shlomo Sand, Alona Kimchi, Sami Michael, Dorit Rabinyan, Shulamit Shachar, Yaira Amit and Gershon Shaked. With her translations from English to Hebrew are the books of Patricia Cornwall and Aldous Huxley.

She died of liver cancer on November 2, 2009.

• Yael Lotan – In Memoriam website
• Works by or about Yael Lotan in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• An excahnge of letter between Lotan and Assad el Assad, General Secretary for the Union of Palestinian Writers, New Internationalist, issue 199 – September 1989