Nissim Aloni is an Israeli playwright and short-story writer. Aloni, who was born in Tel Aviv, was the first playwright to break away from the Israeli preoccupation with social realism and dramatic reportage. However, his first play, Akhzar mikol hamelekh (The king is the cruelest of all), 1953, still utilized a known Hebrew literary convention: the use of a biblical story as a contemporary allegory. In this case the biblical conflict between Jeroboam and King Rehoboam was the basis for an examination of the Israeli political scene at the time.