Uri Gordon

Uri Gordon was born in 1935 in Tel Aviv

Uri Gordon was born in Tel Aviv in 1935 and grew up in Givatayim. As a child he had polio, which badly damaged his legs. He was among the founders of the Young Guard of the Labor Party.

In 1974 he became head of the Zionist movement's division for the next generation. In 1979 he went to the United States as an envoy and founded the Movement for Fulfilling Zionism, whose members pledged to move to Israel.

He returned in 1983 and was elected to the Jewish Agency executive as head of Youth Aliyah. He handled the absorption of thousands of young people from Ethiopia during Operation Moses and helped found the educational community at Nitzana youth village with Arie Eliav.

In 1987 he became head of the Jewish Agency's immigration and absorption department and was reelected in 1992. He took part in Operation Solomon and in the arrival of nearly half a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and other countries.

In 1998 he was elected president of the Zionist Council in Israel. After a severe stroke left him in a wheelchair, he initiated the first Israeli Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem in May 2000. He died in 2000, and a park in Ra'anana and a center at Nitzana bear his name.