- Yigal Allon
Yigal Allon (born October 10, 1918, died February 29, 1980), commander of the Palmach, was an Israeli politician, serving as one of the leaders of Mapai and the Alignment, acting Prime Minister of Israel, member of Knesset and government minister from the tenth through the seventeenth Knessets. Alon was born in Kfar Tavor and studied at the Kadoori Agricultural High School. As a young man he joined the Jewish Settlement Police as a police officer.
- Avraham Stern
Avraham Stern, alias Yair was the founder and leader of the Zionist militant organization later known as Lehi which was also known as the "Stern Gang". Stern was born in Suwałki, Poland, immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1925, and studied in the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem, and afterwards in the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. He specialized in Classic languages and literature (Greek and Latin).
- Naeim Giladi
Naeim Giladi was born in Iraq as Naeim Khalaschi in 1929 to an Iraqi Jewish family and later lived in Israel and the United States. He is an Anti-Zionist, and author of an autobiographical article and historical analysis entitled "The Jews of Iraq". The article later formed the basis for his originally self-published book "Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews".
- Chaim Herzog
Chaim Herzog served as the sixth President of Israel (1983–1993), following a distinguished career in both the British Army and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
- Yigael Yadin
Yigael Yadin (Hebrew: יגאל ידין, born Yigal Sukenik on March 20, 1917, died June 28, 1984) was an Israeli archeologist, politician, and the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The Israeli actor Yossi Yadin was his brother. Yadin was born in 1917 to noted archeologist Eliezer Sukenik. He joined the Haganah at age fifteen and served there in a variety of different capacities.
- Imi Lichtenfeld
Imrich ("Emerich") Lichtenfeld (1910 - January 1998) is the founder of the self-defence system Krav Maga. He is also known by the Hebrew calque of his name, Imi Sde-Or.
- Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi ((November 24, 1884 - April 23, 1963) was a historian, Labor Zionist leader, and the second and longest serving President of Israel. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, Ben-Zvi was the eldest son of Zvi Shimshelevitz, who later took the name Shimshi. He was active in the Jewish self-defense units organized in Ukraine to defend Jews during the pogroms of 1905, and joined the Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion) Zionist political party.
- Moshe Sneh
Moshe Sneh (born January 6 1909 in {Radzyn, Poland; died March 1 1972) was an Israeli politician and military figure and one of the founders of Mapam, a left-wing group. Sneh later joined the Israeli Communist Party (Maki), being one of the leaders of a more pro-Israeli split in 1965 (as opposed to the anti-Zionism of pro-Palestine militants among the party members). He was a member of the Knesset from 1949 to 1965 and from 1969 to 1972.
- Yitzhak Sadeh
Yitzhak Sadeh, (1890-1952 also known as Isaac Landoberg), was the commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the independence of the State of Israel. Born in Lublin in 1890, he was honored with a medal from the Russian army for his bravery during World War I. During 1917-1919 he assisted Joseph Trumpeldor in the foundation of "HeHalutz" ("The Pioneer") movement and in 1920 made "aliya" to the land of Israel.
- David Raziel
David Raziel (December 19, 1910 - May 20, 1941) was a fighter of the Jewish underground during the British mandate, and one of the founders of the Irgun. Born in Smorgon, Vilna district in the Russian Empire, he immigrated with his family at the age of three to British Mandate of Palestine, where his father became a Hebrew teacher at a Tel-Aviv elementary school. When the 1929 Hebron massacre broke out, he joined the Haganah in Jerusalem, …
- David Shaltiel
David Shaltiel (1903-1969) is most well-known for being the district commander of the Haganah in Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He was born into an Portuguese orthodox Jewish family in Hamburg. At 16, Shaltiel joined the Zionist youth movement Blau Weiss, and he went to Palestine in 1923. However, he was not happy there, and returned to Europe in 1925. From 1925-1930 he was enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. In 1934 he returned to Palestine.
- Meir Amit
Meir Amit (born 17 March 1921) was the Director of the Mossad from 1963 to 1968. Born in Palestine during the British mandate, he fought for the Haganah during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the late 1950s Amit studied in the United States, earning a business degree from Columbia Business School. After returning to Israel, Amit entered the Israeli intelligence community, first as a Major General at the head of IDF Intelligence in 1961, and then as Mossad Director in 1963.
- Eliyahu Golomb
Golomb, Eliyahu (1893-1945) was the leader of the Jewish defense effort in Palestine and chief architect of the Haganah, the underground military organization for defense of the Yishuv between 1920 and 1948.
- Yisrael Galili
Yisrael Galili (10 February 1911-8 February 1986) was an Israeli politician and member of Knesset. Before Israel's independence in 1948, he had served as Chief of Staff of the Haganah. Galili was born in the town of Brailov in Poland (now Ukraine). His family immigrated to Palestine when he was three years old, and settled in Tel Aviv. Galili attended school there and apprenticed with a printer. Galili began his military career in 1927, when he enlisted in the Haganah.
- Aharon Yariv
Aharon "Aharale" Yariv was an Israeli politician and soldier. Born in Moscow, USSR, Yariv began his military service in the Haganah and later the British Army. He then joined the IDF, first as a field officer, and later as the Israeli military attaché to Washington. From 1964 to 1972, Yariv was the head of Aman, the IDF's military intelligence. After the Munich Massacre in 1972, he served as Prime Minister Golda Meir's Advisor on Counterterrorism, …
- Mordechai Gur
Lt. Gen. Mordechai "Motta" Gur (May 6, 1930 - July 16, 1995) was an Israeli politician and the 10th Chief of Staff of the IDF. Mordechai Gur was born in Jerusalem on May 6, 1930. He later joined the Haganah (the underground armed group of the Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine) and continued serving in a military capacity with the founding of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the Israeli War of Independence of 1948.
- Shaul Avigur
Shaul Avigur (1899-1978) was a founder of the Israeli Intelligence Community. Avigur was born in Latvia under the name Saul Meyeroff{Meirovbut when his son Gur Meyeroff was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he changed it to Avigur, meaning "Father of Gur". Along with Reuven Shiloah, Avigur was instrumental in forming SHAI, the intelligence wing of the Haganah, in 1934.
- Shlomo Lahat
Maj. Gen. Shlomo "Chich" Lahat was born in Germany in 1925 and has lived in Israel since 1933. He served in the Haganah and the Israel Defense Forces. In the IDF, he eventually became the head of the Personnel Directorate until 1972. He was also the 8th mayor of Tel Aviv.
- Dov Hoz
Dov Hoz (1894-1940) was a leader of the Israeli labor movement, one of the founders of the Haganah organization, and a pioneer of Israeli aviation. Born in Russia in 1894, Hoz immigrated to Ottoman Palestine along with his family in 1906. Beginning in 1909, he was part of the group that organized guarding activity of the city of Tel-Aviv. The group included Shaul Meiruv-Avigor, Eliyahu Golomb and Moshe Sharett.
- Yaakov Dori
Yaakov Dori was the first Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Born in the present day Ukraine, his family emigrated to Ottoman Palestine following the anti-Jewish pogrom in Odessa in 1905. Upon completing high school at the Reali School in Haifa, he enlisted in the Jewish Legion of the British Army during World War I. He later joined the Haganah and adopted the underground name of "Dan." In 1939, Dori was appointed Chief of Staff of the Haganah, …
- Abd Al-Qadir Al-Husayni
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (alternatively spelt 'Abd al Qadir al Husseini) (1907-1948) was a Palestinian nationalist and fighter who in late 1933 founded the secret military group known as the Organization for Holy Struggle, ("Munazzamat al-Jihad al-Muqaddas"), which he and Hasan Salama commanded as the Army of the Holy War or Holy War Army ("Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas") in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
- Mordechai Hod
Aluf (Maj. Gen.) Mordechai "Mottie" Hod (September 28, 1926- June 29, 2003) was the Commander of the Israeli Air Force during the 1967 Six-Day War. Born in British Mandated Palestine in Kibbutz Degania, Hod originally took the surname Fein. He studied at a local Agriculture College before enlisting in the British Army in 1944, where he served as a driver. With the end of the Second World War Hod joined the Haganah's Palmach groundforce.
- Zvi Zamir
Zvi Zamir born Zvicka Zarzevsky was a Major General in the Israel Defense Forces and the Director of the Mossad from 1968 to 1974. Born in Poland, Zamir immigrated with his family to the then British Mandate of Palestine when only seven months old. At the age of 18 Zamir began his military career, first as a soldier in the Haganah's Palmach, a unit that included future Israeli leaders among the likes of Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin.
- Daniel Rosenfeld
Daniel Rosenfeld (born in Palestine, October 19, 1929) is a writer and expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His father was an official in the British Mandate's Government from 1921-1948, and he was educated in Hebrew and English schools. In 1948 Rosenfeld enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces and fought for the defense of Jerusalem during the War of Independence in 1948. He worked for many years at Bank Leumi. Currently, he lives in the United States of America.
- Jacob Israël de Haan
Jacob Israël de Haan was a Dutch Jewish lawyer, legal scholar, diplomat, journalist and poet. He was assassinated by the Haganah on July 1 1924, allegedly for his political stance, although there may have been additional factors stemming from strong feuds with others. Portrait of Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924) (with permission of)
- Efraim Sneh
Efraim Sneh (born 19 September 1944) is an Israeli politician and physician. He is a member of the Knesset for the Labor Party and is the current Deputy Defense Minister. Born in Tel Aviv in 1944, Sneh is the son of Moshe Sneh, who was one of the heads of the Haganah. His father was elected to the first Knesset as a representative of Mapam, before defecting to Maki, the Israeli Communist Party. Sneh served in the Nahal infantry battalion from 1962 to 1964.
- Yitzhak Hofi
Yitzhak Hofi was the director of Mossad from 1974 to 1982. Hofi was born in Tel Aviv. He joined the Haganah in 1944 and commanded a company in the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. He continued to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces in a variety of command, staff and training posts. He headed the Northern Command of the IDF during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. He was Acting Chief of Staff for a brief period in 1974, …
- Shimon Tzabar
Shimon Tzabar (born 5 March, 1926 in Tel Aviv, died 19 March, 2007 in London) was a member of the editorial board of Imperial News. He described himself as a "Hebrew speaking Palestinian". In his teens he was a member of all three Jewish underground military organizations in British Mandatory Palestine: Lehi [the Stern Gang], Etzel, and Haganah (Palmach) that fought the British and the surrounding Arab populations as Arab attacks on Jews increased, …
- Hank Greenspun
Herman "Hank" Milton Greenspun (August 27, 1909 - July 23, 1989) was the longtime, and often controversial, publisher of the "Las Vegas Sun" newspaper. He purchased the Sun in 1949, and served as its editor and publisher until his death. As a young man, Greenspun became closely involved with Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and the work he was doing to reopen his casino "The Flamingo".
- Nahum Admoni
Nahum Admoni (born 1929) was the Director of the Mossad from 1982 to 1989. Born in Jerusalem to Polish immigrants, he fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War in the SHAI, the Haganah intelligence branch, and later in the newly created Israeli Defense Force Intelligence. After the war he went to the United States and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, returning to Israel in 1954.
- Aharon Remez
Aluf Aharon Remez was an Israeli politician and the second commander of the Israeli Air Force. Remez was born in British Mandated Palestine in Tel Aviv. His military career began when he entered the Haganah in 1936, but just three years later he was sponsored by the Jewish Agency to receive flying lessons in New Jersey and join the Royal Air Force. At the end of 1947 Sherut Avir, the air wing of the Haganah, was formed.
- Yisrael Amir
Lt. Col. Yisrael Amir (1903-November 1, 2002) was the first commander of the Israeli Air Force. Amir was born in Russia, moving to Palestine in 1923 while it was under the British Mandate. Amir then began his military career by joining the newly created Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary group. Following Israel's declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948, the Israel Defense Forces was formed from the Haganah and Jewish Brigade. The air wing of the Haganah.
- Yehuda Amital
Rav Yehuda Amital (born 31 October 1924), a noted Orthodox Jewish rabbi, is a Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion and a former member of Knesset. Rabbi Amital was born Yehuda Klein in Hungary. When Germany invaded Hungary in 1943, the Nazis sent his entire family to Auschwitz, where they were killed. Yehudah himself was sent to a Labor camp, thus surviving the Holocaust. He remained in the Labor camp for eight months, …
- Shulamith Hareven
Shulamith Hareven (1930 - November 25, 2003) was an Israeli author and essayist. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to the Land of Israel with her parents in 1940. At 17 she joined the Haganah, serving as a combat medic in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in the siege of Jerusalem. She was assigned to establish Israel Army Radio, opening the station's broadcasts in 1950. She was a war correspondent in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War.
- Aharon Davidi
Aharon Davidi (born 1927) is an Israeli general and has founded the Sar-El volunteer program of the IDF. He was born in Israel in as son of a Ukrainian immigrant family. From the age of fifteen, he served with the Haganah and Palmach. In the Israeli War of Independence (1948) he fought in the southern front with the Negev Brigade where he met his future wife Hassida. In 1953 he volunteered for the new IDF paratroopers as a company commander.
- Aura Herzog
Aura Herzog, was born in Egypt and became an Israeli writer. She was married to Haim Herzog, the late sixth President of the State of Israel. Herzog's early education was provided in French schools in Ismailiya. She has a B.Sc. degree in mathematics and physics from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She married her husband in 1947. After graduating, she joined the Haganah.
- Yekutiel Adam
Yekutiel "Kuti" Adam (November 3, 1927 – June 10, 1982) was an Israeli general and former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces. He was born in Tel Aviv, Israel to Yehuda and Elisheva Adam (formerly Adamov). He was named after his grandfather, who was killed in combat in 1919. His family were Mountain Jews from the Caucusus region. At the age of 15, Yekutiel joined the Haganah. At 20, he became a commander.
- Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (born 1915 in Vienna; died 1975 in Jerusalem) was a philosopher, mathematician, and linguist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, best known for his pioneering work in machine translation and formal linguistics. Born Oscar Westreich, he was raised in Berlin. In 1933 he emigrated to the Palestine with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, and briefly joined the kibbutz Tirat-Zvi before settling in Jerusalem and marrying Shulamith.
- Shlomo ben Yoseph
Shlomo Ben Yoseph (7 May 1913-29 June 1938) was the first Jew to be hanged by the British in the British Mandate of Palestine. Born Shlomo Tabachnik to a Jewish family in the town of Lutsk, Poland (now in Ukraine), he was a Zionist from a very early age. He immigrated to Palestine when the first opportunity arose, in September 1937, aboard a ship carrying illegal immigrants.
- Rudolph Sonneborn
Rudolph G. Sonneborn (June 1898 - ?) was an oil executive, businessman, and onetime President of The State of Israel Bond Drive. In 1947, Sonneborn supplied arms to the fledgling State of Israel through a fictitious entity, the Sonneborn Institute. Sonneborn was the fourth husband of "New York Post" owner and publisher Dorothy Schiff, a granddaughter of the American financier Jacob Schiff. NY Times Obituary