Editing Israel Shahak (section)

==Biography==
Israel Shahak was born Israel Himmelstaub, in 1933, in [[Warsaw]], [[Poland]], and was the youngest child of a cultured, [[Zionist]] family of [[Ashkenazi Jews]].{{sfn|Adams|2001|loc="Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw&nbsp;..."}}{{sfn|Shahak|Ash|1987|loc="I was born in Warsaw and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end"}} During the Second World War, the [[Occupation of Poland (1939-1945)|Nazi occupation of Poland]] (1939–1945) interned the Shahak family to the [[Warsaw Ghetto]]; yet his elder brother escaped from Poland to the [[United Kingdom]], where he joined the [[Royal Air Force]]. Life in occupied Poland forced Shahak's mother to pay a Roman Catholic family to hide Israel, whom they returned when she could not afford their safe-keeping him from the Nazis.

In 1943, the Nazis sent the Shahak family to the [[Poniatowa concentration camp]], to the west of Lublin, where his father died. Fortuitously, the ten-year-old boy and his mother escaped from the Poniatowa camp, and returned to Warsaw; yet, within a year, whilst emptying the city of Jews, the Nazis recaptured Israel and his mother, and imprisoned them in the [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp]], where they survived for 2 years,{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2001}} until the camp and its inmates were liberated in 1945 by the [[British Army]]. At age 13, in 1946, he re-examined the [[Existence of God|idea of God's existence]] and concluded that evidence for the theory was lacking.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} As [[Displaced persons camp|displaced persons]], mother and son [[Aliyah Bet|managed to emigrate]] to the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]], where Shahak's application to join a [[kibbutz]] was denied, because he was judged to be physically too slender.{{sfn|Pallis|2001|loc="After setbacks—he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz—he became a model citizen."}}

Post-war, the twelve-year-old Israel worked and studied and supported his mother, whose health had deteriorated in Bergen-Belsen. After a [[Judaism|religious Jewish education]] at boarding school in the village of [[Kfar Hassidim]], Israel and his mother moved to the city of [[Tel Aviv]]. Upon graduation from secondary school, Shahak [[Conscription in Israel|served]] in the [[Israel Defense Forces]] (IDF). After the military service, he earned a [[doctorate]] in chemistry, at [[Hebrew University]].{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}

In the course of his professional career as a scientist, Shahak's work in [[organic chemistry]] produced science about [[organic compounds]] of the element [[fluorine]] (F), contributed to cancer research, for which he gained an international reputation{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2001}} and included posting as an assistant to [[Ernst David Bergmann]], the [[Nuclear physics|nuclear physicist]] who was chairman (1952) of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}{{sfn|Adams|2001}} In 1961, Shahak pursued post-doctoral studies at [[Stanford University]], in the U.S.; in 1963, he returned to Israel, where he became a popular lecturer and researcher in chemistry, at Hebrew University; moreover, by 1965, Shahak actively participated in the Israeli politics of the day.{{sfn|Hitchens|2001}}

In 1990, the academic Shahak retired from the faculty of Hebrew University, because of poor health ([[diabetes mellitus]]) and greater interest in research work in other fields of intellectual enquiry.{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} For most of his adult life, Shahak resided in the [[Rehavia]] neighborhood in [[West Jerusalem]]; at the age of 68 years, he died of diabetic complications, and was buried in the [[Givat Shaul]] cemetery.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}}

Shahak had a deep affinity with [[Spinoza]]:{{sfn|Hitchens|2001|loc="He had no heroes and no dogmas and no party allegiances. If he admitted to any intellectual model, it would have been Spinoza."}} he always packed a copy of [[Ethics (Spinoza)|The Ethics]] in his suitcase for reading during his periodic stints of service in the [[Israel Defense Forces]],{{sfn|Cooley|2015|p=217}} and had been writing a book on the philosopher before his death.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} His activities as a [[intellectual|public intellectual]] fighting for human rights causes and for a secular state earned him a reputation for controversy, and frequent abuse. He was regularly spat on,{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} frequently given death threats,{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} and decried variously as an Israel basher, [[self-hating Jew]], traitor, and [[enemy of the people]].{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2001|loc="He was known by other names: Israel basher, self-hating Jew, traitor, enemy of the people. The entire lexicon of standard if unimaginative Israeli abuse was thrown at him, accompanied by calls to have him dismissed from the university or barred from leaving the country (to prevent him attacking it abroad). […] When he was branded (like many Jewish critics of Israel) with the old cliche of 'self-hating Jew', he always responded with his first-hand knowledge of the price of being a Jew. 'That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans.{{' "}}}}