Ranan Lurie

Ranan R. Lurie (born May 26, 1932) is an American Israeli political cartoonist and journalist, a senior associate at the CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) since 1990, a member of the United Nation Correspondents Association, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Cartoonews, a current events educational magazine.

Ranan Lurie was born on May 26, 1932 to Joseph and Shoshanna, who traveled from Tel Aviv to Port Said, Egypt, at the invitation of the grandfather (Rabbi Isaiah Lurie) to give birth of their first born at his home. (This event gave him an advantage when he met with President Sadat (1977 and 1979) as well as with President Mubarak (1984 and 1997) for interviews and portrait-sittings). Two weeks after his birth Ranan and his parents returned to Tel Aviv. His father was sixth-generation Jerusalem-born and his mother seventh-generation.

Ranan Lurie's father, Joseph, born in 1906, was one of the first Jerusalem babies born outside the walls of the old city, in the new neighborhood of "Yemin Moshe". The grandfather Isaiah, petrified by the thought that he would be recruited into the Turkish army during the First World War, to be sent to Gallipoli, utilized his French citizenship and fled to Egypt where he became the president of the Ashkenazi Jewish community.

In 1947, Lurie was appointed member of Israel's National Youth Handball team.

Lurie was a member of the Israeli underground armed organization ("Irgun") and was wounded in a battle against the British. He later served in the IDF reserves as a Major and senior company commander. He became a member of a small covert sky-diving unit of officers-only trained to operate behind enemy lines. He shared parachute training with the U.S. 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the 16th independent Parachute Regiment of the British Forces in Aldershot, UK, and with the French Foreign Legion's Paratroop Forces in Pau, France.

In July 1954, when Israel and Egypt were still in an official stage of war, Lurie infiltrated the flagship of an Egyptian navy flotilla anchoring in Venice, supposedly as an Australian journalist, "interviewed" the frigate's high ranking enemy officers and took photographs of their newly installed Soviet Radar. Lurie won the highest Israeli journalistic award granted "For Unprecedented bravery".

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