Amos Kenan, Israeli Writer and Artist, Dies at 82
Amos Kenan, the Israeli artist and writer who scandalized his countrymen with his iconoclasm, has died at 82.
He died Tuesday after struggling for years with Alzheimer’s disease, reports said.
Kenan, born in Tel Aviv, was a fighter in the pre-state underground Lehi movement and an early member of the Canaanite movement, which envisioned a Hebrew nationalism bereft of the Jewish religion.
His pointed anti-religious satire led to his firing from Ha’aretz in the early 1950s and accusations – never proven – that he was involved in an bomb attack on a religious Cabinet minister.
He lived in France from 1954-1962, where he formed friendships with some of that country’s leading litterati.
Upon his return to Israel, he resumed his career as a satirist, writing for periodicals and the stage. he was also a noted sculptor and painter.
In the late 1980s, he broke with his lifelong Lehi veterans when he said he saw in the Palestinian struggle echoes of their own youthful aspirations for independence.
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