Mayor Ron Huldai
Defending Tel Aviv’s tolerance and
diversity against government wishes
By City Mayors’ Middle East Correspondent

28 September 2009: Israel’s globally renowned tourism hotspot and regional financial hub is led by Ron Huldai, its tenth elected mayor since the city’s foundation in 1909 as an adjunct to the ancient settlement of Jaffa. First elected in 1998 after a lengthy military career, Labor’s Huldai has sought to continue Tel Aviv’s economic growth as well as promote its tolerance and diversity, against the wishes of the country’s interior minister.

How good is Mayor Ron Huldai?

Huldai leads a city which sits apart from the social conservatism of a nation defined by the pervasive strictures of religion, a vibrant and affluent 24/7 destination, dubbed by lifestyle magazine Wallpaper* as the “Mediterranean’s new capital of cool”. A beacon of Modernism, its unique collection of Bauhaus constructions (which owe their construction to the influx of German émigré architects fleeing Nazism in the 1930s) now enjoys World Heritage Site status. In 2008 it was ranked 42nd on Foreign Policy’s Global Cities Index and acts as the nation’s financial hub, the Middle East’s second richest city. This in itself leads to an uneasy array of cohesion issues, as seen recently with the mayor’s facing down of the Israeli interior minister’s demands to cancel the city’s longstanding annual Gay Pride event. While Huldai’s defence of the openness, tolerance and pluralism of the city‘s gay-friendly culture (in a region noted for being anything but) against the religious right, other newfound outspoken opponents, organised as City For All, accuse the mayor of an autocratic style and as being pro-developer in all city planning decisions.

Huldai’s political career as mayor requires something of an understanding of the fluid state of the Israeli electoral scene. Huldai was first elected mayor in the city’s 1998 elections, as head of the Labor list, replacing one term Likud mayor and former minister Roni Milo. Re-elected in 2003 with 62 per cent of the vote, his 2008 third term re-election margin was less convincing. His victory was dependent on an alliance with the centrist Kadima (the Likud breakaway formed by Ariel Sharon) as the One Tel Aviv list. With little over 50 per cent of votes cast, Huldai defeated leftist parliamentarian Dov Khenin’s City For All list once the support of the Senior Citizens Party was considered.

Ron Huldai was born to Polish parents in the kibbutz settlement of Hulda in 1944 (from which his parents took their adoptive surname). He graduated in history at Tel Aviv University, later taking courses at Auburn Montgomery University and the USAF Air War College, both in Alabama, and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Huldai served for 26 years in the Israeli Air Force, eventually attaining the rank of Brigadier General, overseeing the IAF pilot training school and acting as chief administrator for infrastructure construction. Retiring from military service in 1989, he entered the private sector, before becoming principal of Tel-Aviv’s Herzliya Hebrew High School in 1992, overseeing a number of reforms during his six year tenure before being elected mayor.

The City of Tel Aviv Municipality is governed by a 31-member council, elected by proportional representation every five years, with the last elections held in 2008. As well as the mayor’s One Tel Aviv Labour/Kadima faction, there are also representatives from the Senior Citizens faction, the left New Movement-Meretz and the Greens, the centre-right Likud and a number of religious parties such as Shas. The municipality’s activities are largely concerned with social welfare, culture and leisure, urban planning, water and traffic management.