Israel

🇮🇱Benjamin Netanyahu

Politics

b. 1949

"I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: Today we are all Americans — in grief, as in defiance."

🇮🇱Naftali Bennett

Politics

b. 1972

"If there’s one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s not Iran but the future of the Jews in America, and we have to fix this together. If we don’t act urgently, we’re going to be losing millions of Jews to assimilation."

🇮🇱Natan Sharansky

Politics

Movement to Free Soviet Jewry

b. 1948

"Freedom's skeptics must understand that the democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator who loves you. Indeed, it is the absence of democracy that represents the real threat to peace."

🇮🇱Ariel Sharon

Military

1928–2014

"We can also reassure our Palestinian partners that we understand the importance of territorial contiguity in the West Bank for a viable Palestinian state."

🇮🇱Yehuda Ashlag

Religion

1885–1954

"Anything that is perceived and sensed by the five senses, or which takes time and space, is called 'Corporeal.'"

🇮🇱Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Business

1947–2011

"all the money the system spends in turning inventory into throughput."

🇮🇱Reuven Rivlin

Politics

one-state solution

b. 1939

"Today, almost 20 years after Oslo, we can see clearly that the idea of separating the nations failed."

🇮🇱Moshe Dayan

Politics

1915–1981

"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."

🇮🇱Yuval Noah Harari

Literature

b. 1976

"The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Seculars strive not to confuse truth with belief."

🇮🇱Gal Gadot

Entertainment

b. 1985

"GLAMOUR: Were there certain things that you felt were particularly important in portraying Wonder Woman?"

🇮🇱Tzipi Livni

Politics

b. 1958

"The sooner the Arab children will learn that they must build their houses where they are now, as the solution is not their return to Israel, the better it will be for everyone."

🇮🇱Leah Tsemel

Law

b. 1945

"Everyone fights with their abilities - the Israelis have helicopters and rockets and the Palestinians have nothing but themselves and some very primitive home-made explosives."

🇮🇱Israel Shahak

Social Activism

1933–2001

"That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans."

🇮🇱Tzachi Hanegbi

Politics

b. 1957

"We have switched from defense to offense and in this battle all the members of the Hamas leadership are legitimate targets."

🇮🇱Shimon Peres

Politics

1923–2016

"Iran is a great problem, but not necessarily a great country. In fact, I think it is a very weak country."

🇮🇱Avner Strauss

Music

b. 1954

"If I had plenty, I'd be content with what I have."

🇮🇱Gideon Levy

Journalism

b. 1953

"The resistance should no longer be directed solely against the occupation. The resistance is to the regime in place in Israel. Her imprisonment is the regime and she opposes the regime under whose boots she lives."

🇮🇱Ephraim Kishon

Literature

1924–2005

"If you start looking like vour passport photo, it's high time you went abroad."

🇮🇱Abba Eban

Politics

1915–2002

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."

🇮🇱Lev Leviev

Business

b. 1984

"Just as a Muslim studies Islam, the Jew has to study Judaism. Everyone has to learn the heritage of his family and the history that dates back thousands of years."

🇮🇱Menachem Begin

Politics

1913–1992

"We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents."

🇮🇱Eli Noam

Economics

b. 1946

"Noam at the web site of the Institute for Tele-Information"

🇮🇱Shlomo Amar

Religion

b. 1948

"Even when there is a struggle between nations it cannot be turned into a war of religions."

🇮🇱Oded Fehr

Entertainment

b. 1970

"The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility. Things like that I learned in the army."

🇮🇱Zeev Sternhell

Science

1935–2020

"Thus, fascism adopted the economic aspect of liberalism but completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual and moral heritage of modernity."

🇮🇱Avigdor Lieberman

Politics

b. 1958

"People can choose between the sweet lie or the bitter truth. I say the bitter truth, but many people don't want to hear it."

🇮🇱Majalli Wahabi

Politics

b. 1954

"I think my appointment is the example and answer for those who accuse Israel of being an apartheid state. It shows minorities have equal rights and we are part of the government, the state and the parliament."

🇮🇱Ami Ayalon

Politics

b. 1945

"Israel must decide quickly what sort of environment it wants to live in because the current model, which has some apartheid characteristics, is not compatible with Jewish principles."

🇮🇱Yeshayahu Leibowitz

Science

Neo-Kantianism

1903–1994

"Only a religion addressed to life's prose, a religion of the dull routine of daily activity, is worthy of the name."

"It may be said, without exaggeration, that there is no other text which is documented by such varied types of sources."

🇮🇱Alex Miller (writer)

Literature

b. 1977

"I have discovered motives, my own and everyone else's, to be impenetrable."

🇮🇱Bar Refaeli

Sports

b. 1985

"It’s easier with the paparazzi in Los Angeles, because they give you more space and don’t push you or touch you. I believe I will never only live in Israel, so Los Angeles will be home at least for the next few years."

🇮🇱Amos Oz

Literature

1939–2018

"Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: 'Yids, go back to Palestine,' so we came back to Palestine, and now the worldatlarge shouts at us: 'Yids, get out of Palestine.'"

🇮🇱Yitzhak Rabin

Politics

1922–1995

"Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life."

🇮🇱Ehud Olmert

Politics

b. 1945

"The formula for the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem."

🇮🇱Ehud Barak

Politics

b. 1942

"No, I'm saying even now, if I have to summarize the situation - in one word it's good, in two words, not good."

🇮🇱Eyal Berkovic

Sports

b. 1972

"If my head had been a ball, it would have been in the top corner of the net."