Shimon Peres, 1923-2016
Peres is the only Israeli to serve as prime minister and president. Born in Belarus, he arrived in Palestine in 1934. He helped establish and arm the initial IDF in the 1940s and launched a…
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…
Ariel Sharon, 1928-2014
Sharon led IDF commandos in the 1950s, was a field commander in 1967 and drove the Sinai counteroffensive in 1973. As defense minister, he launched the First Lebanon War, which resulted in an 18-year occupation,…
Arieh Warshel, 1940-
With Martin Karplus and Michael Levitt, Warshel was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2013. His work in computational chemistry applied classical mechanics and quantum mechanics to predict and model chemical reactions. He studied…
Ezer Weizman, 1924-2005
Weizman, the nephew of Chaim Weizmann, was Israel’s seventh president from 1993 to 2000. He was a founder of the Israeli Air Force and became its commander in 1958. As defense minister in the first…
Yigael Yadin, 1917-1984
Yadin was a military commander and an archaeologist. He led the Negev campaign against the Egyptians in the War of Independence and served as the second IDF chief of staff from 1949 to 1952. He…
Avraham Yitzhak, 1972-
Yitzhak, who moved to Israel at age 19, was the first Ethiopian immigrant to earn an Israeli medical degree, having started his studies in Ethiopia, and to serve as an IDF combat surgeon. He was…
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