By Mayor Ron Huldai
TEL AVIV (Press Release)–It is with great sorrow that I share with you that Shlomo “Chich” Lahat, the eighth mayor of Tel Aviv, our beloved and most devoted leader who created miracles in the city of Tel Aviv, has passed away.
Lahat was a former Major General in the Israel Defense Forces and Head of the Manpower Directorate. He was elected on the Likud ticket in 1974 and would go onto serve as Tel Aviv’s 8th mayor for a total of four consecutive terms. He coined the slogan about Tel Aviv being “the city that never stops.”
Shlomo Lindner (later Lahat) was born in Germany. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. The family settled in Rehovot. Lahat’s nickname “Chich” dates back to when he played tug-of-war with his friends at the age of eight. “I would yell ‘zieh’ – ‘Pull’ [in German] – to my friends, and they made it into ‘Chich,’ and it stuck with me to this day,” he later recalled. Lahat was a member of Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and attended Gymnasia Herzliya high school in Tel Aviv.
Lahat was married to Ziva, former director of the Humanities Library at Tel Aviv University. They had two children. His son, Dan Lahat, is a Tel Aviv city council member for the Yesh Atid party.
Lahat served in the Haganah and then the Israel Defense Forces. While serving in the IDF, he studied law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1956, he was the first Israeli officer to study at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Upon his return, he became an instructor at the IDF Command and Staff School.
In 1959, he headed the Operations Branch of the General Staff Operations Department, transferring to the Armor Corps in 1962. In the Six-Day War he was appointed governor of East Jerusalem, and then head of the Central Command Staff with the rank of brigadier general. In 1969 he was appointed commander of the Armored Forces in Sinai. During the War of Attrition he was commander of operations at the Suez Canal. In 1970-1973, he served as chief of the Manpower Directorate
Lahat established the Tel Aviv-Yafo Foundation with his dear friend Ted Arison, which since its inception has made a great difference in the services and facilities of the city that benefit both residents and the state of Israel.
Lahat was committed to improving education, art, welfare and outdoor activities in the city of Tel Aviv. He turned the city into a capital of art and culture, building the Suzanne Dallal center, the opera house and more. The Tel Aviv promenade was his idea and is named after him.
He was the only mayor in Israel who made Professor Haim Harari, President of Weitzman Institute’s idea a reality by creating the HEMDA-the Schwartz/Riesman Science Education Center for gifted teenagers. He understood that the most valuable resource in the Holy land was in fact the potential of its young people.
It was a pleasure consulting with him, gaining courage to act differently, to think “out of the box” and make decisions that will be appreciated for years to come.
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Huldai is mayor of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality