EXTREMISTS from Israel

Top 5

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Israeli Extremists of all time. This list of famous Israeli Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. George Habash (1926 - 2008)

With an HPI of 66.17, George Habash is the most famous Israeli Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 39 different languages on wikipedia.

George Habash (Arabic: جورج حبش, romanized: Jūrj Ḥabash), also known by his laqab "Al-Hakim" (Arabic: الحكيم, romanized: Al-Ḥakīm, lit. 'The Wise Man or The Doctor'; 1 August 1926 – 26 January 2008), was a Palestinian politician and physician who founded the Marxist–Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).Habash was born in Lydda, Mandatory Palestine in 1926. In 1948, 19-year-old Habash, a medical student at the American University of Beirut, went to his home town of Lydda during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, when the people of the city and his family were driven out in what became known as the Lydda Death March that led to the death of his sister. In 1951, after graduating first in his class from medical school, Habash worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and ran a clinic in Amman. He later relocated to Syria and Lebanon. In 1967, after being sidelined in the Palestine Liberation Organization by Yasser Arafat, he founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist movement which opposes the existence of Israel and advocates for a single democratic and secular state in the entire region. In the 1970 Dawson's Field hijackings, Habash masterminded the hijackings of four Western airliners to Jordan, which led to the Black September conflict, and his subsequent exile to Lebanon. He remained opposed to a two-state solution even after the PLO signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993. He resigned as secretary general of the PFLP due to ill health in 2000, and died after a heart attack in 2008.

2. Abu Nidal (1937 - 2002)

With an HPI of 65.10, Abu Nidal is the 2nd most famous Israeli Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Sabri Khalil al-Banna (Arabic: صبري خليل البنا; May 1937 – 16 August 2002), known by his nom de guerre Abu Nidal, was the founder of Fatah: The Revolutionary Council (Arabic: فتح المجلس الثوري), a militant Palestinian splinter group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). At the height of its militancy in the 1970s and 1980s, the ANO was widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian groups.Abu Nidal ("father of struggle") formed the ANO in October 1974 after a split from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Acting as a freelance contractor, Abu Nidal is believed to have ordered attacks in 20 countries, killing over 300 and injuring over 650. The group's operations included the Rome and Vienna airport attacks on 27 December 1985, when gunmen opened fire on passengers in simultaneous shootings at El Al ticket counters, killing 20. Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal's biographer, wrote of the shootings that their "random cruelty marked them as typical Abu Nidal operations".Abu Nidal died after a shooting in his Baghdad apartment in August 2002. Palestinian sources believed he was killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein, while Iraqi officials insisted he had committed suicide during an interrogation. "He was the patriot turned psychopath", David Hirst wrote in The Guardian on the news of his death. "He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary."

3. Wadie Haddad (1927 - 1978)

With an HPI of 59.34, Wadie Haddad is the 3rd most famous Israeli Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Wadie Haddad (Arabic: وديع حداد; 1927 – 28 March 1978), also known as Abu Hani, was a Palestinian militant who led the combat operations of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was responsible for organizing several hijackings of international civilian passenger aircraft in the 1960s and 1970s, the most infamous of which was the Entebbe hijacking, when Palestinian/German militants under his command held 106 hostages — both Israelis and non-Israeli Jews — on a flight from Israel to France after diverting it to Uganda.

4. Sirhan Sirhan (b. 1944)

With an HPI of 57.62, Sirhan Sirhan is the 4th most famous Israeli Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (; Arabic: سرحان بشارة سرحان Sirḥān Bišāra Sirḥān; born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian-Jordanian man who assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., a younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 United States presidential election. On June 5, 1968, Sirhan shot and mortally wounded Robert Kennedy shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. The circumstances surrounding the attack, which took place five years after John's assassination, have led to numerous conspiracy theories. In 1989, Sirhan told British journalist David Frost: "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter jets to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians." Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Sirhan carried out the attack on the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War), though it occurred at a time when the American public was overwhelmingly focused on the Vietnam War.On April 17, 1969, Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder, among other charges, and subsequently sentenced to death by gas chamber. In 1972, this was commuted to a life sentence in the aftermath of Furman v. Georgia. He is incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. On August 27, 2021, after 15 years of being denied parole by the local state board, Sirhan was granted parole by a two-person panel. Prosecutors declined to participate or to oppose his release under a policy by American lawyer George Gascón, the Los Angeles County District Attorney. On January 13, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom blocked Sirhan's release on parole. He was denied parole again on March 1, 2023.

5. Yigal Amir (b. 1970)

With an HPI of 56.49, Yigal Amir is the 5th most famous Israeli Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Yigal Amir (Hebrew: יגאל עמיר; born May 31, 1970) is an Israeli right-wing extremist who assassinated incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv, Israel. At the time of the murder, he was a law student at Bar-Ilan University. Amir is serving a life sentence for murder plus six years for injuring Rabin's bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, under aggravating circumstances. He was later sentenced to an additional eight years for conspiracy to murder. Amir has never expressed regret over the assassination. Numerous radical right-wing Israeli organisations have carried out campaigns for Amir's release. The Shin Bet security service has assessed that Amir remains a threat to national security. The Knesset passed a law preventing the President of Israel from pardoning the assassin of a prime minister.