Yael Lotan

Yael Lotan (; 11 September 1935 – 2 November 2009) was an Israeli journalist, editor, translator, peace and human rights activist.

Biography Lotan was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1935, the daughter of Dr. Binyamin Eliav Lubotzky (1909, Riga – July 30, 1974, Petah Tikva), 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.

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

Lotan was active in the "Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear-free Middle East". 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.

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

She died of liver cancer on November 2, 2009, aged 74, in Givatayim, Israel.

Published works Books

The Other Eye, London: Peter Davies publishing, 1960 Phaedra, New York: Bantam, 1962 Mangrove town, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964 No Peace Yet, London: Halban, 1991 Avishag, Toby Press, 2002

Selected articles Yael Lotan, No Peace Yet, Ariel: The Israel Review of Arts and Letters – Vol. 102, 1996 Yael Lotan, The Vanunu Campaign and Its Lessons, Antiwar.com, April 29, 2004 Lotan, Yael. "Israel at 50: Zionism's cultural 'revolution.'." Race and Class, vol. 40, no. 1, 1998, p. 71