Yitzhak Rachamim Navon (Hebrew: יצחק נבון‎; 9 April 1921 – 6 November 2015[1]) was an Israeli politician, diplomat, playwright, and author.

On his mother's side, he was descended from the renowned Moroccan-Jewish kabbalist rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, who immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem in 1742.

In 1932, they moved to Sheikh Badr near the western entrance to Jerusalem, relocating to Mekor Baruch in 1936.

Navon was a member of the Haganah's Arab Intelligence Unit and worked undercover in Jerusalem.

In 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister and Navon became a civil service department head at the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Navon began a long campaign fighting illiteracy in Israel, which affected about 12% of the Jewish population.

[1] Navon ordered the mobilisation of hundreds of female soldiers serving compulsory national service to teach illiterate adults to read and write Hebrew.

He assumed office on 29 May 1978 and was the first president with small children to move into Beit HaNassi, the presidential residence in Jerusalem.

Although the Israeli presidency is a ceremonial office, Navon was an outspoken advocate of a judicial commission of inquiry to probe Israel's role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre perpetrated by Lebanese Falangists in 1982.

Navon a socialistic Jew was impressed by the legal implications: "This action is immoral and ineffective and will cause irreversible damage in the long and short run to Palestinian children and to our own."

[7] Shortly before his death, he was placed honorary last 120th spot on the Zionist Union list on 2015 Israeli legislative election.