Ya'akov Meridor (Hebrew: יעקב מרידור, born Yaakov Viniarsky 29 September 1913 – 30 June 1995) was an Israeli politician, Irgun commander and businessman.

Yaakov Viniarsky (later Meridor) was born in the Polish town of Lipno to a Jewish family of middle-class merchants.

In 1941, he accompanied David Raziel on a mission to Iraq to sabotage oil fields on the outskirts of Baghdad.

When Raziel was killed along with a British officer, Meridor returned to Palestine and took over as Chief Commander of the Irgun.

His escape was assisted by a Sudanese Jew named Mayer Malka who provided kosher food and visited him when he was a prisoner in African detention camps.

[3] Under Begin, he was charged with the task of managing the Irgun's integration in the newly formed Israel Defense Forces.

Due to the austerity regulations in force at the time, the company suffered financially and it was bought out by the Israeli government.

In his book Terror out of Zion, J. Bowyer Bell noted: "One of the greatest transformations has been that of Meridor, who was first elected to the Knesset with the occupation of worker, but who has since become Israel's greatest shipping tycoon, a rival to the Greeks, a man whose photograph has been in Time, who appears more often in Monaco than along Dizengoff Street.

He refused to resign,[5] and retained his ministerial position when Yitzhak Shamir took over from Begin in 1983, but lost his seat again in the 1984 elections.