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Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild in Hebrew – HaBron Avraham Edmond Benyamin Jaakov Rothschild; 19 August 1845 – 2 November 1934) was a French member of the Rothschild banking family. A strong supporter of Zionism, his large donations lent significant support to the movement during its early years, which helped lead to the establishment of the State of Israel, where he is simply known as “the baron Rothschild”, “HaBaron”, or “Hanadiv” (Eng: The generous one). 

He became a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, financing the first site at Rishon LeZion. In his goal for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, he promoted industrialization and economic development. In 1924, he established the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), which acquired more than 125,000 acres (50,586 ha) of land and set up business ventures.

Edmond de Rothschild also played a pivotal role in Israel’s wine industry. Under the supervision of his administrators in Ottoman Palestine, farm colonies and vineyards were established, and two major wineries were opened in Rishon LeZion and Zikhron Ya’akov. It is estimated that Rothschild spent over $50 million in supporting the settlements and backed research in electricity by engineers and financed development of an electric generating station.

Rothschild funded a glass factory that would supply bottles for his wineries. Rothschild met Meir Dizengoff in Paris and chose Dizengoff to launch and manage the new factory, called Mizaga. Dizengoff opened the factory in Tantura in 1892 and managed the factory for approximately two years. Mizaga was the first Jewish-owned factory in Ottoman Palestine.

Jews and Arabs lived amicably on Rothschild’s land, with no Arab grievances, even in the worst periods of disturbance. According to historian Albert M. Hyamson, “Rothschild recognised that the overriding interest of the Jews of Palestine was the confidence and the friendship of their Arab neighbours. The interests of the Arab cultivators of the land he bought were never overlooked, but by development he made this land capable of maintaining a population ten times its former size. 

Golda Meir (born Golda Mabovitch; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978; married name Meyerson/Myerson between 1917–1956) was an Israeli politician, teacher, and kibbutznikit who served as the fourth prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. She was the first woman to become head of government in Israel.

Born in Kyiv in Ukraine, she immigrated to Wisconsin, United States as a child with her family in 1906, and was educated there, becoming a teacher. After getting married, she and her husband emigrated to then Palestine in 1921, settling on a kibbutz. Meir was elected prime minister of Israel on March 17, 1969, after serving as labour minister and foreign minister.^[5] The world’s fourth and Israel’s only woman to hold the office of prime minister, and the first in any country in the Middle East, she has been described as the “Iron Lady” of Israeli politics.

Meir was Prime Minister during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Israel was caught off guard and suffered severe losses in the first days of the war, before recovering and defeating the invading armies. Public anger at the government caused Meir’s resignation the following year. She died in 1978 of lymphoma.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky MBE born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky, (17 October 1880, Odessa  – 3 August 1940, Hunter, New York) was a Russian Jewish Revisionist Zionist leader, author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa. With Joseph Trumpeldor, he co-founded the Jewish Legion of the British army in World War I. Later he established several Jewish organizations in Palestine, including Betar, Hatzohar, and the Irgun.

His influence on Israeli politics is profound through his closest protégé Menachem Begin‘s administration (1977–1983), consolidating the domination of Israeli politics by the right-wing Likud party; and through the administrations (1996–1999, 2009–2021) of Likud‘s leader (1993–1999, 2005–) Benjamin Netanyahu, the son of his former personal secretary and historian, Benzion Netanyahu.

Prior to the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist movement, where he soon became known as a powerful speaker and an influential leader. With more pogroms looming on the horizon, he established the Jewish Self-Defense Organization, a Jewish militant group, to safeguard Jewish communities throughout Russia. He became the source of great controversy in the Russian Jewish community as a result of these actions.

During World War I, he had the idea of establishing a Jewish Legion to fight alongside the British against the Ottomans who then controlled Palestine. In 1915, together with Joseph Trumpeldor, a one-armed veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, he created the Zion Mule Corps, which consisted of several hundred Jewish men, mainly Russians who had been exiled from Palestine by the Ottoman Empire and had settled in Egypt. The unit served with distinction in the Battle of Gallipoli. When the Zion Mule Corps was disbanded, Jabotinsky traveled to London, where he continued his efforts to establish Jewish units to fight in Palestine as part of the British Army. Although Jabotinsky did not serve with the Zion Mule Corps, Trumpeldor, Jabotinsky and 120 Zion Mule Corps members did serve in Platoon 16 of the 20th Battalion of the London Regiment. In 1917, the government agreed to establish three Jewish battalions, initiating the Jewish Legion. As an honorary lieutenant in the 38th Royal Fusiliers, Jabotinsky saw action in Palestine in 1918. His battalion was one of the first to enter Transjordan. 

During the 1930s, Jabotinsky was deeply concerned with the situation of the Jewish community in Eastern Europe. In 1936, Jabotinsky prepared the so-called “evacuation plan”, which called for the evacuation of 1.5 million Jews from Poland, the Baltic States, Nazi Germany, Hungary and Romania to Palestine over the span of the next ten years. The plan was first proposed on 8 September 1936 in the conservative Polish newspaper Czas, the day after Jabotinsky organized a conference where more details of the plan were laid out; the emigration would take 10 years and would include 750,000 Jews from Poland, with 75,000 between age of 20–39 leaving the country each year. Jabotinsky stated that his goal was to reduce Jewish population in the countries involved, to levels that would make them disinterested in its further reduction. It was in relation to his dedicated and determined efforts to rescue Jews from the coming Holocaust and his constant vision of building the Jewish Homeland that Jabotinsky is fondly remembered by both those he encouraged to escape, and those who followed his vision.