Ron Huldai


Ron Huldai is the current Mayor of Tel Aviv, since 1998. Before he entered his role as Tel Aviv mayor, Huldai served as a fighter pilot and a commander in the Israeli Air Force. After leaving the army as a brigadier general, he entered the business world and was later headmaster of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv.

Biography

He was born in 1944 in Hulda, one of three brothers born to Polish immigrant parents who moved to Palestine from Łódź. His father Ozer was among the founders of the kibbutz and the principal of its school, while his mother Hanka was a teacher and headed the organization of plays and performances at the kibbutz. Huldai grew up on the kibbutz. He studied at Tel Aviv University, Auburn University at Montgomery, the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Advanced Management Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Military service and politics

Huldai was conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces in 1963, and joined the Israeli Air Force, serving as a combat pilot and becoming a career officer. During the Six-Day War, he participated in Operation Focus, and he shot down three enemy aircraft and participated in numerous missions. Huldai held several key senior command positions, including as the commander of Nevatim Airbase, Hatzerim Airbase, the Air Force Pilots Training School, and a coordinator of the government authorities and supervisor of civilian construction projects for the IAF. He left the IAF in 1989 with the rank of Brigadier General.
Following his retirement from active duty in 1989, he entered the private sector. After spending two years selling air conditioners in Nigeria, he returned to Israel and managed the closure of a construction plant in Ramla. He then became headmaster of the prestigious Herzliya Hebrew High School for six years until 1998.
A member of the Labor Party, Huldai was first elected mayor of Tel Aviv in 1998, was re-elected in 2003 with 62% of the vote, again in 2008 with 50.6%,, in 2013 with 53% and yet again in 2018 with 47%.

2008 Elections

Huldai ran for mayor in 2008 municipal elections as part of the One Tel Aviv list, a partnership between Labor and Kadima. He was supported by the Pensioners, the city council's largest faction.