Yigal Allon, 1918-1980
Allon led the Palmach and was an IDF major general who oversaw the Southern Command. He served in the Knesset from 1955 until his death. After the 1967 war, he proposed returning the West Bank…
Shlomo Avineri, 1933-2023
Avineri, a native of Poland, was one of Israel’s premier political scientists as a Hebrew University professor and wrote extensively on the history of political philosophy, including Marx, Engels, Hegel, Zionism, colonialism and the Soviet…
Ralph Bunche, 1904-1971
Bunche, an American diplomat, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for brokering the armistice agreements between Israel and four Arab neighbors in 1949. He served in 1947 with the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine,…
Clark Clifford, 1906-1998
As a special presidential counsel, Clifford opposed the pro-Arab State Department and urged President Harry Truman to maintain support for the U.N. partition of Palestine and to lift the arms embargo on Jewish forces heading…
Lyndon Johnson, 1908-1973
The 36th U.S. president, Johnson increased U.S. economic and military support for Israel. Unlike Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Johnson did not demand Israel’s immediate withdrawal from captured territory after the 1967 war. He outlined five…
Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023
Kissinger was the national security adviser and secretary of state to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He heavily influenced U.S. policy in the Middle East and made “shuttle diplomacy” famous after the October 1973…
Richard Nixon, 1913-1994
Though he expressed antisemitic views in private, Nixon as the 37th U.S. president authorized the airlift that replenished Israel’s arms during the October 1973 war, providing the means for Israel to end the war with…
Moshe Sharett, 1894-1965
The first foreign minister and second prime minister of Israel, Ukraine-born Sharett (originally Shertok) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the key negotiators of cease-fire agreements that ended the War…
