Yoram Aridor
| Yoram Aridor | |
|---|---|
| Date of birth | 24 October 1933 |
| Place of birth | Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine |
| Knessets | 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 |
| Faction represented in Knesset | |
| 1969–1974 | Gahal |
| 1974–1988 | Likud |
| Ministerial roles | |
| 1981 | Minister of Communications |
| 1981–1983 | Minister of Finance |
Yoram Aridor (Hebrew: יורם ארידור, born 24 October 1933) is an Israeli former politician, who served as a member of the Knesset from 1969 until 1988, as well as holding two ministerial posts.
Born in Tel Aviv, Aridor studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and practiced law while being active in the Herut movement. He was first elected to the Knesset in 1969 as a member of Gahal, an alliance of Herut and the Liberal Party. Following the 1977 elections he became a deputy minister in Menachem Begin's government.
Aridor's first ministerial appointment was the Minister of Communications, in 1981. In this position, Aridor immediately restored television color broadcasting. In the 1970s, color bursts (the signals encoding colors) were actively removed from IBA transmissions, in an attempt to discourage the population from buying new television sets. Aridor's action led to an increase of his popularity, and boosted his political career.
Two weeks later he was appointed the Minister of Finance, and again took a populist approach, lowering taxes on automobiles and household appliances. As such, his days as finance minister were called the "Merry Aridor Days". The lowering of inflation in Israel during his first years in office is attributed in part to this policy, leading to an increase in government's income from taxes. In subsequent years however, the inflation rose sharply (from 102% in 1981 to 191% in 1983), and as a countermeasure Aridor proposed to peg the Israeli shekel to the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate. He resigned his position on 15 October 1983 due to widespread criticism of his "dollarization plan".
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