YITZHAK BEN-AHARON, the last founding giant of Israel’s left wing, died two months short of his 100th birthday. A controversial figure on the Israeli political scene, he was one of the first to call for the return of all territories occupied by Israel in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and reached the peak of his career as secretary-general of the Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation.

In July 1940 he volunteered for the British Army and served as an officer in the Pioneer Corps. He was taken prisoner in Greece in 1941 and spent the next four years in a German PoW camp.

Commenting on his death, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “Israel has lost one of its giants. Yitzhak was a real Zionist and an honest ideologue who over decades never hesitated to sound his clear and distinct views.” Amir Peretz, the chairman of the Labour Party, said: “We have lost one of the greatest of the generation, a man who loved people and pursued peace with all his personality.”

Ben-Aharon was viewed as the last living icon of the Israeli Labour Party and the last remnant of an ideology long seen as outdated by mainstream party members. Throughout his life he remained loyal to his socialist and trade union origins and was one of the signatories of a party letter of condolence to “the Soviet people” on the death of Stalin.

Ben-Aharon was born in 1906 in the Bukovina region of Romania, then part ofthe Austro-Hungarian empire After studying economic and political science in Berlin, he emigrated to Palestine in 1928 and joined a kibbutz, where he spent the rest of his life.

In 1935 he visited Germany as an emissary of HeHalutz, the Zionist youth organisation, until he was arrested and deported by the Gestapo. Working with organised labour in Tel Aviv, he was appointed secretary of Mapai, the forerunner of the Israeli Labour Party in 1938. In 1946 he was briefly arrested by the British authorities in Palestine and in 1948 he became one of the leaders of Mapam, which became the main left-wing opposition to the ruling party.

In 1949 he was a bitter opponent of the Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s decision to dismantle Palmah, Israel’s main fighting force in its war of independence. Ben-Aharon also disputed Mapai’s policy of positioning itself within the American sphere of influence, regarding Moscow as more his nation’s spiritual home.

After Mapai and Mapan merged in 1965 to form the Israeli Labour Party, Ben- Aharon became its Transport Minister but resigned two years later, blaming the Government for not upholding “workers’ principles”. From 1969 to 1973 as general secretary of Histadrut he fought against the governing Mapai for workers’ rights, encouraged strikes in industrial disputes and tried to force private businesses to conform to trade union practices. Refusing to depart from his unfashionable socialist policies, Ben-Aharon left active politics in 1977. When Mapai eventually lost the elections to the right-wing Likud party, he commented: “If this is the will of the people, then the people should be replaced.”

In retirement he became a rallying point for a new generation of young left-wing radicals nostalgic for an age when the proletariat were in power.

Over the years his writings were collected in a dozen books and in 1995 the Labour Government awarded him the Israel Prize for his life’s work. In 2002, horrified by the party’s coalition with the Government of Ariel Sharon, he wrote to Labour headquarters asking that his name be struck off the party register.

Ben-Aharon left his body to medical science. He is survived by his second wife, Bilha, and by two sons.

Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, trade union leader and politician, was born on July 17, 1906. He died on May 19, 2006, aged 99.