Dov Khenin - Biography

Biography

Dov Khenin was born in 1958 in the city of Petah Tikva, the son of David Khenin, a leader of Maki. His first name, Dov Boris, is after his father’s brother, who was killed in World War II. In his youth, Khenin began to be involved in the Banki Youth Movement and other leftist youth circles that were active in Tel Aviv.

From 1984 to 2004, Khenin worked as a lawyer in the office of Amnon Zichroni. This professional framework led Khenin take on some of the key cases dealing with human rights violations in Israel and in the Territories. In the mid-eighties, he represented Yitzhak Laor in a petition to the High Court against the banning of his play “Ephraim Returns to the Army,” which was censored by the Israeli Committee on Film and Theatre. Following the case, the Supreme Court annulled the ban and permitted the performance of the play. In 2003, Khenin took on the case, pro-bono, of five left-wing military refusers.

In the year 2000, he received a Ph.D. in political science from Tel Aviv University. His doctoral thesis was entitled, “Discourse and Hegemony in the Eretz Yisrael Workers’ Party and in the British Labor Party: Changing Patterns of Preservation and Conversion.” That same year he participated in the first cycle of the “Environmental Fellows Program” at the Heschel Center for Environmental learning and leadership, as a research fellow at the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. In 2002 he completed his post-doctoral work on the relationship between society and environmentalism at Oxford University.

Khenin is married with three children.