Name: Yaakov Hagoel, 51 years old, chairman of the World Zionist Organization.
Who am I: Jewish, Zionist, values lead me. Believes in leadership with a way of life, and is very attached to the Jabotinsky concept of “glory”. I will always try my best, but whatever doesn’t go well, will be “challenged”, with all my might. sets goals and the background I came from helps me achieve them.
roots: Grandmother on father’s side from Izmir and grandfather from a village on the border of Greece and Turkey. They got married, immigrated to Israel in the 1930s for Zionist reasons and arrived in the Shapira neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv. Grandfather, after whom I am named, died of appendicitis at a young age and grandmother raised five children alone, including a five-month-old toddler. She had a small hut, where she sold coffee and tea to the business owners in the area and barely made a living.
Mother’s parents are Holocaust survivors. Grandfather from Poland, survived Auschwitz, and grandmother was a brave partisan in Romania. They met after the war on the way to Israel, arrived in south Tel Aviv, got married and settled two blocks from father’s parents. They had an industrial confectionery that sold to containers and in my eyes they were rich and flew abroad every year in the 70s, when only wealthy people could afford it.
The parents met in the neighborhood, at a party, got married and moved to Jaffa D., not an easy neighborhood. When I turned seven, they decided to become Zionists and move to Arad, after passing the acceptance committee of the mayor at the time, Baiga Shohat. Father was a pastry chef in hotels in the Dead Sea and Arad and the late mother was a kindergarten assistant.
My childhood: From Jaffa I only remember flashes and the move to Arad. A different area, a different culture, a very far away place – four hours drive to Tel Aviv by bus. I had an amazing childhood in an urban kibbutz, a desert in front of my eyes, a city under construction. I wasn’t one of the best in school, I didn’t finish 12th grade and I don’t have a high school diploma, but I have a bachelor’s degree in law, after I did preparatory school at the university.
Beitar: I was very active in the youth movements, until at the age of 13 I decided, out of a youth rebellion in a very leftist city, to establish the Beitar branch there. I came from a revisionist family. There was a British detention center near my grandmother’s house in Tel Aviv and she used to smuggle food to the prisoners.
My political involvement was not mainstream. I was involved and I managed to drag more and more teenagers into the movement and in the 8th grade I went to an instructor course with ten other friends and we obtained a shelter from the municipality where the actions took place. One of my biggest accomplishments is that until today there is a branch of Beitar in Arad.
I went through all the training courses and was offered to leave for the 13th year. I enlisted in the Nahal nucleus of Beitar for Kibbutz Mashgav with the kibbutz movement. The movement pumped me into training positions. After the release I took it upon myself to expand the branch in Netanya, after two years I became a Yishuv center regional coordinator and at the age of 35 I was appointed CEO of Beitar Global.
revival: My wife, a military woman, who manages to manage the house with a career and a husband who is busy with the people of Israel, has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education, and educates generations in Israel. We met in Beitar and we’ve been together ever since. If I didn’t have a back like her at home, of someone who understands the magnitude of the job and the challenges, I couldn’t do what I do. We have four children and a grandson and we live in Netanya.
Global Betar: I managed the international activities of the movement and there I got to know the Jewish world, the challenges of the youth and students and later of their parents. After five years in the position, I was elected to become a board member of the World Zionist Organization and head of the department for activity in Israel and the fight against anti-Semitism.
The World Zionist Organization: Founded by Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, where his General Assembly was founded. He was a practical man and wanted to have a platform for the establishment of the State of Israel and for dealing with the Zionist challenges. Since then, its plenum, a democratic body that includes 700 delegates from around the world, from all parties, currents and organizations, and the executive committee meets every five years and serves as the government of the Jewish people. The Zionist Congress has represented the people of Israel for 125 years, it elects management and a chairman and I have the honor to head it.
Outdated Image: We are aware of it and invest a lot to reach the younger generation through social networks in Israel and the Diaspora. I replaced a person who is 25 years older than me and most of the management is younger than me. We have made legislative changes so that young people under the age of 35 will sit in the institutions.
Celebrations: We celebrated the 125th anniversary of the first Zionist Congress in Basel and were criticized for the nature of the event and the identity of the participants. In retrospect, I feel great pride that I led the celebrations. Me, the young man who grew up in Jaffa and Arad, who understands the meaning of money and knows how to put it in the important things. I knew I would be kidnapped, but we managed to bring more than a thousand leaders from around the world, most of whom paid for the stay, and world leaders who wanted to be part of the process and the place where Herzl started it all. We brought 125 young entrepreneurs and connected them there, to that place and that famous balcony. The administration was afraid of the audit and who would come on August 29, just before the children returned to school, and there was a waiting list.
Challenges: We are facing difficult challenges in the world and are working, among other things, to preserve the Hebrew language, on the subject of assimilation, when we have not yet been able to reach the number of Jews that existed before World War II, even though the birth rate in Israel is high, because more than 60% of the world’s Jews are assimilating.
Immigrating to Israel is one of our biggest challenges. We are ending a year with the highest number of immigrants since the welcome immigration from the CIS countries in the 1990s. I led the immigration of the Jews from Ukraine and we saw that quite a few of the immigrants come here out of hardship and not necessarily by choice. I have already sat down with the new minister of immigration and absorption, Ofir Sofer, and explained to him how important it is to strengthen the Jewish identity of the communities abroad so that they come here by choice.
The war in Ukraine: I replaced our beloved president, Boji Herzog, after his election, as chairman of the agency until the appointment of Doron Almog, for over a year. Although I was optimistic and thought that war would not break out, we were well prepared for it. On February 24, we opened Within hours a call center in Ukrainian and Russian, with extensive digital advertising, which still works today. We received tens of thousands of inquiries and managed to rescue 30,000 Jews from the battle zone and transport them to Moldova, Romania, Poland and Hungary. We closed 4,000 beds in hotels and hostels, and buses took them across the border.
I’ve been there myself a few times. At the border there are 300 meters between the Ukrainian and Polish botka and when I saw the stuck 400 Ukrainian women with children walking in the snow and cold, it brought me back to the stories of my grandfathers 80 years ago. Then there was a Zionist Organization and a Jewish Agency, but there was no State of Israel. Within weeks we brought 15 thousand immigrants to Israel. We spent over NIS 100 million in two months, which we covered a few months later with donations.
Anti-Semitism: In the current decade there is a steep increase in the number of anti-Semitic events and their intensity. Our job is to raise awareness of it and give community leaders tools to deal with it. When the head of a community says to put the kippah in your pocket so as not to stand out, I explain that from a security point of view you are afraid, but you continue to be Jewish and must not hide.
Three weeks ago I met with Jewish students in the US who change their names on social media for fear of talkbacks like “dirty Jew”, “smelly Jew”, and this continues with graffiti on the door of the locker or the room, because there is a mezuzah there. We have 250 teachers Israelis from our education system, with the understanding that if we bring Judaism and Zionism to the schools, it will strengthen the communities.
I sit in the security fund of the Jewish Agency, 50% of which belong to the Zionist Organization, which works in cooperation with the security forces and the government of Israel. A body was established that is supposed to respond to the physical security of Diaspora Jewry, such as security doors and cameras that we finance. On Yom Kippur five years ago, a disaster was averted in a synagogue in Germany, when an attacker tried to enter and shoot at the security door of the synagogue, where 53 worshipers were at the time, and when he was unsuccessful, he shot passers-by.
The new government: We are not an advocacy body, but a leadership that works with the heads of the communities. When the rumors about the “grandchild law” and anti-LGBT legislation started, I told everyone who asked that I don’t think extreme things will happen and if they do, I will act in front of the Prime Minister. I have no doubt that everything will be done in dialogue with world Jewry.
Looking ahead: The Jewish world is very interesting to me and I will choose to be in a place where I can influence the people of Israel. politics? I haven’t passed half of my first term yet, so there is still time to think about what’s next and I don’t rule out doing another term. In the meantime, I have a lot to contribute and do in the Zionist Organization.