Veteran reporter of the Israel scene, Eric Silver wrote his last piece for the JC on June 20 - a fascinating description of the Israeli "cyberspy" companies that infiltrate online terrorist groups and plotters.
A freelance writer for the past 20 years, Eric Silver wrote extensively for the JC as well as English-language Israeli journals and British, American, Indian and Canadian publications. Prior to that, he was a Guardian man for 27 years. His reporting was noted for accuracy, perception and fairness.
Born to a Lithuanian immigrant working-class couple, who had their only child in later life, Eric was a bright pupil at Roundhay Grammar School in Leeds, winning a place at Oxford.
He gained a second-class degree in PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) and worked on the Harrogate Herald and Northern Echo, Darlington, where he also reported on sports for the Sunday Observer before joining the Manchester office of the Guardian in 1960.
He came to the Guardian's new London headquarters in 1964 and worked through several departments, including industrial relations, gossip column and sports.
He covered Israel's Six-Day War in 1967 and was posted to Jerusalem in 1972 to write for the Guardian and the Observer. He described his posting as "enforced aliyah" for a "failed Zionist". He had been a member of the secular left-wing Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.
He covered the 1973 Yom Kippur War, stand-offs with Syria, disturbances in Lebanon prior to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and relations with Egypt following the 1979 peace treaty. He noted that Israel was far keener than Egypt on making contact.
After a three-year posting in India, he returned in 1987 to Israel, where his three daughters had largely grown up, and went freelance.
One of his first articles for the JC described the Indian public's warmth to Israel, in contrast to the government's ambivalent stance - in deference to its 90-million-strong Muslim minority.
In three years in India, Eric noted, other than bureaucratic obstructionism towards official visits to Israel, the only antisemitism he encountered was from a British Council officer and another Guardian journalist.
As the First Intifada gained momentum, he covered Arab grievances, especially at their mistreatment by Israelis. He had earlier commented on Israeli attitudes in his 1978 Guardian obituary of Golda Meir, when he criticised her for complete lack of interest in Arabs.
He was equally alert to Israeli issues, from women's complaints over being sidelined by men, to election coverage in 1988, the intifada-driven drop in tourism, the increasing religiosity of Jerusalem and the wave of Russian immigration in the 1990s.
He was highly conscious of the complexity and irony of life in the Middle East. He covered the Winograd Report into Israel's futile 2006 incursion into Lebanon - and its minimal impact on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; the murder last year of a Christian bookseller in Gaza; and the expert treatment at Alyn, the disabled children's hospital in Jerusalem, of a six-year-old Arab girl paralysed when an Israeli strike hit her family's car in Gaza.
Writing on the problems of Palestinian journalists taking a critical line on their own parties, he quoted the Palestinian-affairs correspondent of the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh: "I find it sad that as an Arab-Muslim journalist, the only place I can express myself with no limitation is a Jewish paper."
Eric Silver wrote without fear or favour, intrigued by the variety and unexpectedness of events. With his
twinkling blue eyes, he was eager, helpful and knowledgeable. His diagnosis of cancer, while on holiday, came as a shock.
His biography of trades-union leader Vic Feather was published in 1973. His 1984 biography of Menachem Begin, Begin: The Haunted Prophet, was praised by writer Chaim Bermant for being "well informed" and "eminently fair" but vehemently attacked by Jewish right-wingers. In 1992 he brought out The Book of the Just on "silent heroes who saved the Jews".
He is survived by his wife, Bridget; three daughters, Sharon, Rachel and Dina; and 10 grandchildren.