Wellesley Pinchas Aron

Born in London June 18, 1901. He was the only child of a German Jewish mother but the fifth child of a German Jewish father. After graduating Cambridge in 1926, he moved to what was then Palestine. He spent the next years in Haifa and Tel Aviv teaching sports and English. During this time he began to get some knowledge of what Zionism was. He met and married his wife Rose and they had their first child, a girl.
Before returning to London, Weitzman asked Wellesley for a second time in 1927 to assist with the political wing of the Zionist Office in London. Wellesley returned a year later with his young family and started to work at the Zionist Federation Offices
Returning to Palestine he founded a successful advertising agency. In 1938, aware of the possibility of war with Germany, Aron made strenuous efforts to interest the British High Command in the idea of stockpiling reserve supplies of war materiel and food in Palestine. He foresaw the possibility of Germany being victorious in conquering North Africa. Failing in these efforts, when the war broke out in 1939, he joined the British Army as a Palestinian volunteer. Aron rose to become the senior Jewish officer enlisted from Palestine and the first to command a unit. His unit, 178 coy, RASC , was primarily made up of Jewish Palestinian volunteers. Together with four other Jewish RASC units they served with the Eight Army in North Africa. At Tobruk they were under siege for several months until rescued by sea to Egypt. Later, in Italy in 1944, risking courtmartial, he led his unit in helping rescue many Jewish refugees who had escaped the concentration camps of the Holocaust . Aron's unit, together with the other Jewish Palestinian RASC units, became the vanguard of the Jewish Brigade founded in 1944. Aron authored his account of that military experience. In 1945 Aron was one of four Jewish Palestinian officers to receive awards from the British Government. According to the citation "Aron was an officer of the first Palestinian RASC Company to see active service in the desert and is the senior Palestinian RASC Company Commander....... Major Aron proved himself to be an officer of outstanding merit who devotes himself wholehartedly to the interests of his own unit and of the formation he serves"
After the war Aron continued to be involved in Zionist activities. In November 1945, because of his military experience, he was asked to join such luminaries as David Ben Gurion , Golda Meir and Chaim Wietzman in testifying before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in Jerusalem. As was often the case his testimony showed his independence. Despite being a British Military officer he spoke against the prevailing British viewpoint . In 1947, he was asked to organize the Machal office in New York. This was his last official mission for the new State. However,later back in Israel and having returned to private business, he engaged in covert meetings for the State to reduce tensions with Jordan . Always the organizer, Aron was heavily involved in developing Rotary in Israel.
Aron had a total commitment to peace. In 1967, following the Six-Day War, he volunteered to “teach peace” to high school seniors in Tel Aviv. At age 70, Aron joined Father Hussar, a Catholic priest, in pioneering the establishment of Neve Shalom - an Arab-Jewish village near Jerusalem. He moved there with his second wife, Coral, in 1980.