Famous People Born In Haifa

Co-founder of the rock band Kiss, Gene Simmons is also known by his stage persona, The Demon.  With his band, he has over 25 gold-certified albums. A devoted philanthropist, he has donated to charities related to underprivileged children. He created an animated series and owns a magazine and a label.

Odeya Rush is an Israeli model and actress best known for playing lead roles in American films like The Giver, The Bachelors, and Let It Snow. In 2016, Rush was honored at the Young Artist Awards with the Best Performance in a Feature Film award. In 2017, she received the Awards Circuit Community Award for her performance in Lady Bird.

Neri Oxman is an American-Israeli designer best known for combining design, computing, biology, and materials engineering into art and architecture. She also serves as a professor at the MIT Media Lab, leading the Mediated Matter research group. Praised as one of the modern-time greats, Oxman was included in ICON's 20 Most Influential Architects to Shape Our Future list in 2009.

Amos Tversky was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist. He is known for his contribution to the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias. The son of a social worker and politician, he received his doctorate from the University of Michigan before embarking on an academic career. He worked closely with his longtime collaborator, Daniel Kahneman, and wrote several papers together. 

Moshe Safdie is an architect, educator, urban planner, author, and theorist. He is best known for designing Jewel Changi Airport, Marina Bay Sands, and Habitat 67. Widely regarded as a thought leader, Safdie's work has inspired generations of architects all around the world. 

Iddo Goldberg is an Israeli-British actor best known for his roles in the drama TV series  Secret Diary of a Call Girl and horror TV series Salem. Born in Israel, he moved to London as a child. He began his acting career in the 1990s with small roles in TV shows. As of today, he appears in films as well. 

Moran Atias is an Israeli-American actress and model who has appeared in numerous Italian films. She began acting as a teenager and then took up modeling as well. After a successful stint as a model, she once again turned to acting and appeared in TV shows and films across USA, Italy, and Israel. She is also engaged in humanitarian work.  

Haya Harareet was an Israeli screenwriter and actress best remembered for her portrayal of Esther in the 1959 religious epic film Ben-Hur. Among her works as a screenwriter is the 1967 British drama film Our Mother's House, which was directed by Jack Clayton. She was an international star; she appeared in Israeli, Italian, British, and American films.

Jeff Wilbusch is an Israeli-German actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Moishe Lefkovitch in a drama television miniseries titled Unorthodox for which he was honored at the 25th Satellite Awards with the Best Supporting Actor award under the Series, Miniseries or Television Film category.

David Deutsch is a British physicist, currently serving as a visiting professor at the University of Oxford. He is a pioneer in the field of quantum computation and gave a description for a quantum Turing machine. He is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. He received the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998. 

Avi Lerner is an Israeli-American film producer known for producing popular action films like The Expendables, Rambo, and The Expendables 3. He has also executive produced successful movies like Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mechanic. Lerner is credited with founding Millennium Films where he also serves as the CEO.

Rula Jebreal is a Palestinian journalist, foreign policy analyst, novelist, and screenwriter. Her first novel Miral was adapted into a film of the same name. Directed by Julian Schnabel, Miral had Freida Pinto playing the title role.

Ari Folman is an Israeli film director, animator, and screenwriter. He was born to Holocaust survivors in Israel. He studied at Tel Aviv University's department of film and television and began his career producing documentaries. He directed the documentary film Waltz with Bashir, based on the aftermath of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. 

Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Aaron Ciechanover is best known for his research on the mechanism that allows cells to destroy unwanted proteins. Part of the faculty at Technion, he is also part of Patient Innovation’s advisory board and has also been associated with companies such as Rosetta Genomics.

Moshe Weinberg was an Israeli wrestler and coach. A former wrestling champion, Weinberg began his career as a coach at the Wingate Institute. He then went on to become the coach of the Israel national team and accompanied the Israel contingent that traveled to compete in the infamous 1972 Munich Olympics; Weinberg was among the victims of the Munich massacre.

Palestinian-Israeli author Emile Habibi was not only a prominent figure in Arabic literature but also formed his own narrative style, known as the Habibian, mixing storytelling and activism. A fine politician, too, he was part of the Knesset. He was also awarded the Israel Prize for Arabic literature.

Born in Israel, Tanya Reinhart was raised by a communist single mother. The MIT alumna and renowned linguist had taught at the Tel Aviv University for over two decades and was associated with the University of Utrecht for 15 years. She was also known for her political activism.

Dorry Segev is an Israeli-born doctor who is currently the Marjory K. and Thomas Pozefsky Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is also the associate vice-chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is best known for the significant contributions he made to the field of transplantation. 

Samira Saraya is an Israeli-Palestinian actor, rapper, filmmaker, poet, and spoken word artist. Over the years, she has won several prestigious awards including the best screenplay award at the TLVFest. Saraya is also an important activist; she is credited with co-founding a feminist organization called Aswat which aims at changing the perception of the LGBT community in Palestine.

Palestinian historian, essayist, poet, translator and diplomat Elias Sanbar serves as Palestinian ambassador to the UNESCO since 2012. He is one of the founders of Revue d'études palestiniennes (The Journal of Palestine Studies) and served as its editor-in-chief for 25 years. His book The Palestinians won the Palestine Book Awards in 2015. His works include translating Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry into French.