Politicians
- Chaim Weizmann – first President of Israel (1949–52)
- Yitzhak Ben-Zvi – first elected/second president President of Israel (1952–63)
- David Ben-Gurion – first Prime Minister of Israel (1948–54, 1955–63)
- Moshe Sharett – prime minister (1954–55)
- Levi Eshkol – prime minister (1963–69)
- Abba Eban – diplomat and Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel (1966–74)
- Golda Meir – prime minister (1969–74)
- Yitzhak Rabin – prime minister (1974–77, 1992–95); Nobel Peace Prize (1994) (assassinated November 1995)
- Menachem Begin – prime minister (1977–83); Nobel Peace Prize (1978)
- Yitzhak Shamir – prime minister (1983–84, 1986–92)
- Shimon Peres – President of Israel (2007–); prime minister (1984–86, 1995–96); Nobel Peace Prize (1994)
- Benjamin Netanyahu – prime minister (1996–99), (2009–); Likud party chairman
- Ehud Barak – prime minister (1999–01)
- Moshe Katsav – president (2000–07), and convicted rapist
- Ariel Sharon – prime minister (2001–06)
- Ehud Olmert – prime minister (2006–09); former mayor of Jerusalem
- Rehavam Zeevi – founder of the Moledet party (assassinated October 2001)
- Yossi Beilin – leader of the Meretz-Yachad party and peace negotiator
- Yosef Lapid – former leader of the Shinui party
- Teddy Kollek – former mayor of Jerusalem
- Effie Eitam – former leader of the National Religious Party party, now head of the Renewed Religious National Zionist party
- Rabbi Ovadia Yosef – spiritual leader of the Shas party
Read more about this topic: Israeli Figure Skaters
Famous quotes containing the word politicians:
“I’ve always wondered why European politicians as a group seemed brighter than American politicians as a group. Maybe it’s because many American politicians have the race issue to fall back on. They become lazy, suspicious of innovative ideas, and as a result American institutions atrophy.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, coöperate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)