Livia Rokach

International

Livia Rokach (1934-1984) was a daughter of Israel Rokach . Her mother was Esther Rokach (nee Epstein). Iri Rokach was her sister. She became the second wife of Shmuel Katz but they divorced after a short time. She moved to Rome, where she identified herself as an Italian writer and journalist of Palestinian origin -- she was a correspondent for the Israeli daily Davar. She was Israel Radio's correspondent in Rome in the 1960s, and subsequently became correspondent of the Palestinian newspaper Al Fajr. In the early 1980s, she translated excerpts from the Sharett diary and inserted them into a book: Israel's Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary and Other Documents. Despite legal threats from the Israeli foreign ministry, the book was published in the United States by the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG). Israel never took legal action fearing that, in the words of Knesset member Uri Avneri, stopping the dissemination of the booklet would be a mistake of the first order, since this would give it much more publicity. In 1984, Livia Rokach was found dead in a Rome hotel room; it has been said that she committed suicide.