Gershon Harry Agron (; ; 1 November 1959) was an Israeli newspaper editor, politician, and the mayor of West Jerusalem between 1955 and his death in 1959.
A Zionist from his youth, Agron joined the Jewish Legion and fought in Palestine towards the end of World War I; he had come to the attention of the Zionist Organization of America from the start, and quickly became a spokesperson for American Jewry.
He then joined the Zionist Commission as a press officer and helped expand the Jewish Telegraphic Agency upon his return to the United States, of which he served as editor. He lobbied for the creation of Mandatory Palestine and immigrated there permanently in 1924, heading the Zionist Executive press office. Lacking journalistic agency, and ambitious to create Zionist press, he started his own newspaper, The Palestine Post, which was renamed as The Jerusalem Post after Israel's founding; he changed his own name (from Agronsky to Agron) around the same time.
Agron continued to serve as press officer, promoting Zionism, in the new government, and became mayor of West Jerusalem in 1955, during which he spearheaded the city's development.
He died in office from a lung infection following a cancer operation. He was considered an influential proponent of Zionism.
Early life and education Gershon Harry Agron was born Gershon Harry Agronsky in Mena, Chernihiv, in the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), to Yehuda Agronsky and Sheindl Mirenberg, on 27 December 1893. His maternal grandfather was a rabbi, and his parents had hoped he would be one, too. He received an education as a child based in traditional Eastern European Jewry and Judaism in general, before he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1906. He grew up in Philadelphia, Excerpted from where he attended Mishkan Israel Talmudic School and Brown Preparatory School, and and became friends with Israel Goldstein. When they were fourteen, Agron and Goldstein founded Philadelphia's Zionist boys' club. The family later lived in New York, where Agron worked pushing a handcart in the Garment District.
He attended several universities, all in Philadelphia: Temple University, Gratz College, Dropsie College, and the University of Pennsylvania. His university education introduced him to the Western world, but he never became fully Americanized. He was a firm Labor Zionist, which influenced his choice to attend Temple University in 1914; by 1917, he was a strong critic of Labor Zionism and was a General Zionist. Prior to entering Temple University, in 1914, Agron wrote to Arthur Ruppin, at the time the World Zionist Organization (WZO)'s officer in Jaffa, expressing his desire to settle Palestine and requesting advice on whether agriculture or engineering would be a more useful career path for the Zionist enterprise; Ruppin struggled with a response but suggested engineering.
In 1915, Agron began working as a journalist in the United States for Jewish newspapers in English and Yiddish: his first newspaper job was writing obituaries and then editorials for The Jewish World in 1915, for which he gave up his rabbinical training, and he became editor of WZO paper Das Jüdische Volk in 1917, for which he moved to New York. He was also fluent in Hebrew. In March 1918, Agron was a registered annual member of the Jewish Publication Society, and was living at 731 Jackson Street in Philadelphia.
Career 1918–1920: Jewish Legion
Agron joined the Jewish Legion in April 1918, becoming a corporal and then sergeant during training in Windsor (Canada) and Plymouth (England). Within the Legion, he was part of the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. In Canada, Agron – with Dov Yosef, Louis Fischer, and the Brainin brothers – took charge of recruitment for the Legion, enlisting, among others, David Ben-Gurion. Agron was "hand-picked from the beginning" to be the spokesman of the American Jews, and his progress was of import to Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) officials. Jewish writer Moses Z. Frank noted, when meeting recruits in Montreal, "Gershon Agronsky and Louis Fischer stood out among all the other volunteers." Meeting prominent Zionists in London and being surrounded by other young men sharing his Palestine-based cause uplifted Agron and invigorated his belief in Zionism, particularly American Zionism. During his visits to London, he became a public speaker on Zionism; he was demoted twice for going AWOL to make such addresses, being reduced to the rank of private.
Agron fought in Ottoman Palestine in World War I, sending dispatches back from the front for the ZOA. In 1919, Agron wrote a pamphlet, "Survey of the Jewish Battalions", for the Zionist Commission, in which he "lavishly recollected" an enthusiasm among American Jewry for the Legion once war was declared, highlighting the Zionist ideals of recruits. His report was idealised, focusing on success and cultural connections, while avoiding mentions of many interpersonal conflicts and other disappointments among recruits; months after it was published, Agron expressed distaste at his own words, including his kindness to write that the English soldiers' fortune to not be stationed in the Tell El Kebir desert with the Americans was accidental. However, he had written with an "embittered" tone when noting that English recruits to the Legion who did not care for Zionism fought in Palestine, while American Zionist recruits were not afforded the opportunity. The positive impression of the British he gave may have helped the cause with their approval of the Mandate in Palestine. Agron was demobilised locally in 1920; he spent his last months in the military working in the Orderly Room and, upon discovering Legion records would likely be destroyed afterwards, "borrowed these papers for safe keeping".
In New York in 1922, Agron helped found the American Jewish Legion organisation, serving as its first chairman. The group had the purpose to, among other goals, "colonize Jewish ex-service men in Palestine".http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/Vol_24__1922_1923.pdf p. 221 He was one of the first Americans to permanently settle in Palestine.
1921–1932: Press Office roles When he was discharged from the Jewish Legion, Agron became a member of the Yishuv, living in Jerusalem. From 1920 to 1921, he worked for the Press Office of the Zionist Commission as a public relations attaché there; in 1921 he was the head of the Zionist Commission Press Office, a position that took him to the United States on the SS Rotterdam in April that year as a member of Chaim Weizmann's WZO delegation with Albert Einstein, Menachem Ussishkin, Shlomo Ginossar, and Ben Zion Mossensohn. This delegation founded Keren Hayesod. Agron then relocated to the United States in 1921 to help set up the new global venture of the Jewish Correspondence Bureau (Jewish Telegraphic Agency; JTA), based in New York, becoming its news editor. In taking over the JTA, Agron officially left Keren Hayesod, both seeing himself first as a journalist and wanting distance from the bureaucracy of the foundation.
His activities in the United States in this period were to promote Zionism to the political institution and to raise funds for Palestine. In June 1921, Agron published some correspondence he had with president Warren G. Harding, vice president Calvin Coolidge, and British Ambassador Geddes, showing to the public that they all gave some form of support to a Jewish state in Palestine. In the fundraising for Keren Hayesod, he said at this time that over $4million had been pledged by people in the US. In December 1921, Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote to Agron, asking him to help a Zionist writer to publish in the United States; the two were friends at the time: in 1919, Agron had praised an article written by Jabotinsky and, in 1920, Agron was living in the Jabotinsky house, Ravakia.
Until his return to Palestine in 1924, he stayed as the editor of the JTA and was the Yishuv correspondent for international newspapers and press agencies, particularly British and American ones, including The Times; the Manchester Guardian; the Daily Express; and United Press International. He was impatient about immigrating to Palestine, though wrote that he had not wanted to return until he had made significant connections in journalism, choosing to rejoin the yishuv in 1924. At this time, he became the Director of the Zionist Executive's Press Office, and returned to Jerusalem; the role corresponded to and was also known as Commissioner of Press Relations in the Political Department of the Jewish Agency and head of the Government Press Office (GPO).
In 1924, Agron outlined his objectives to Weizmann:
As the director of the press for Zionism and Jewish Palestine, his main duties were to advocate on behalf of the Yishuv to the world, encouraging tourism and immigration through relationships with the global media. The GPO also published its own news media, a weekly bulletin called "News from the Land of Israel", available in multiple languages. Despite his international media connections, Agron's attempts at having the Associated Press carry his pro-Zionism articles regularly failed throughout the 1920s; the United States, where he was initially based and later sent copy from Jerusalem, had a media landscape at this time based on isolationism, and was loath to publish the affairs of the Yishuv.
Though journalism was a prominent career among Zionists, Agron was still the only established English-language newsman in Palestine, and was sought after when local events caught international attention: when the 1927 Jericho earthquake occurred, Agron wrote for multiple wire services and filed copy with his wife's name after making an exclusivity deal with Hearst's Universal Service. At this time he also wrote for The Christian Science Monitor, as Jerusalem correspondent, and The New Palestine. He continued in his public service roles, being the ZOA representative in Jerusalem by September 1929.
1932–1948: The Palestine Post
Shortly after his Hearst deal, Agron began writing the Palestine Bulletin for the JTA, which was circulated around the Arab world. He had been told he could have editorial control over the Bulletin but was not given such freedom; he started considering founding his own newspaper. Agron's want for a newspaper with political purpose further developed following the 1929 Palestine riots. In 1932, he proposed an English-language Palestinian newspaper to Ted Lurie, another young American Yishuv settler. Lurie was immediately invested and borrowed money from his father to take Agron to London so that they could raise funds to start The Palestine Post; succeeding, they ran the first copy on 1 December 1932. Initially, it had a circulation of 1,200, was distributed around Palestine, and was predominantly read by the British soldiers and German immigrants; Agron tailored the content to the readers, for example, including cricket results and cartoons. The Post was heavily aligned with the Israeli Labor Party (at the outset, Mapai) from the beginning, and Agron as well as successive editors made no secret that the newspaper was more interested in advocating for the state than freedom of the press. It was later supported by the Jewish Agency.