Yitzhak Rabin, 1922-1995
Rabin was a two-time prime minister whose assassination shattered hopes for peace under the Oslo Accords, for which he shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. He also signed a…
Itamar Rabinovich, 1942-
Diplomat and historian Rabinovich is a former ambassador to the United States and former president of Tel Aviv University. A former IDF lieutenant colonel, he was Israel’s chief negotiator with Syria in the 1990s. His…
Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004
Although considered pro-Israel, Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, acted to balance U.S. policy toward Israel and Arab states. Under Reagan, the United States halted F-16 sales to Israel after its raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor…
Dennis Ross, 1948-
Working in the Defense Department, with the National Security Council or in the State Department under every president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, Ross helped shape U.S. Middle East policy. He helped get Israel…
Anwar Sadat, 1918-1981
Sadat was elevated from Egypt’s vice president to president after Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970. With Syria, he launched the October 1973 war against Israel. He flew to Israel four years later in pursuit…
Shimon Shamir, 1933-
Shimon Shamir was Israel’s first ambassador to Jordan and its second to Egypt. A scholar of the Middle East, he is a professor emeritus in the faculty of humanities at Tel Aviv University. He was…
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…
Harry Truman, 1884-1972
The 33rd U.S. president, Truman had the United States vote for the U.N. partition plan for Palestine in November 1947 and made the United States the first country to recognize the State of Israel in…
Donald Trump, 1946-
The 45th and 47th U.S. president, Trump took steps in both terms to strengthen ties with Israel. He withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He fulfilled a deferred 1995 law and moved the U.S….
Pope Paul VI, 1897-1978
Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Holy Land in 1964 served as de facto recognition of the State of Israel. It was the first time any pope left Italy in over a century. In 1965,…
Robert Wagner, 1877-1953
As a U.S. senator from New York from 1927 to 1949, Wagner was a prominent Christian Zionist. He introduced unsuccessful legislation in 1939 to admit 20,000 Jewish refugee children from Germany. He co-wrote a congressional…
Raoul Wallenberg, 1912-1947
Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who in 1944 saved thousands of Hungarian Jews, including future Congressman Tom Lantos, by providing protective passports and safe houses. He went missing in January 1945 and is believed to…
Barbi Weinberg, 1929-
Weinberg is the founder and chairman emerita of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, fulfilling a vision she shared with her late husband, Larry, a former AIPAC president. In 1973 she became the first…
Chaim Weizmann, 1874-1952
Weizmann, a native of Russian-controlled Poland, was the first president of Israel. In England during World War I, he used his chemistry skills to develop a synthetic process for making acetone and thus made relationships…
Harold Wilson, 1916-1995
Labor Party leader Wilson was the British prime minister from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976 and was one of Parliament’s strongest supporters of Israel, where he made social democratic friends. He spoke up…
Charles Winters, 1913-1984
A U.S. businessman who wasn’t Jewish, Winters bought three surplus U.S. B-17 bombers on the pretense that they were for his Caribbean transport service. Instead, he delivered them to the nascent Israeli Air Force in…
