Yaakov Hagoel

Origins and early life

Yaakov Hagoel was born in Tel Aviv on 19 February 1971 and, before his military service, volunteered for a year in the southern town of Ofakim.

Work and career

He then served in the Nahal Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces and afterwards in the reserves of the Gaza Division, and he went on to earn a law degree. Raised in the Betar youth movement, he became executive director of World Betar and chairman of the Council of World Zionist Youth Movements, and in 2010 he founded the World Zionist Organization's department for countering antisemitism, which he then headed. He became chairman of World Likud in August 2015 and vice-chairman of the World Zionist Organization the same year, and in October 2020, after the 38th Zionist Congress, he was elected chairman of the organisation.

The Jerusalem Post wrote in 2020 that he had dedicated most of his adult life to Zionism and the Jewish people, and in 2024 that his leadership is rooted in Jewish and Zionist values. From July 2021 to August 2022 he was also acting chairman of the Jewish Agency, and he oversaw what he called the most complex rescue and immigration operation in thirty years, bringing thousands of Jews out of the war in Ukraine. In 2022 he asked the government to recognise Jews killed in antisemitic attacks abroad, a call that led to the cabinet decisions of May 2023 and May 2024 commemorating these victims of the Diaspora with a memorial date, a monument and a database.

After 7 October 2023 he asked Jewish communities to offer vacant apartments to evacuated families, more than 500 of which were in use a year later, and he convened 500 Jewish leaders from 38 countries to discuss the war and the surge in antisemitism. He lives in Netanya, is married and the father of four, and the Jerusalem Post listed him among its fifty most influential Jews in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024.