Gershon Agron was an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i newspaper editor and mayor of Jerusalem in 1955-1959.

Biography

Gershon (Agronsky) Agron was born in the Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 and emigrated with his family to the United States at the age of five. He grew up in Philadelphia. During World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, he fought with the Jewish Legion

Jewish Legion

The Jewish Legion was the name for five battalions of Jewish volunteers established as the British Army's 38th through 42nd Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers...

 in Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. From 1920 to 1921, he worked for the Press Office of the Zionist Commission. Until his immigration to Palestine in 1924, he worked as the editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is an international news agency serving Jewish community newspapers and media around the world. The JTA was founded on February 6, 1917, by Jacob Landau as the Jewish Correspondence Bureau in The Hague with the mandate of collecting and disseminating news among and...

 and correspondent for several international press agencies, including The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 of London and the Manchester Guardian. In 1932, Agron founded “The Palestine Post,” an English-language newspaper that was renamed the Jerusalem Post in 1950. Among the paper's earliest reporters was Agron's nephew, Martin Agronsky

Martin Agronsky

Martin Agronsky was an American journalist and host of the television program Agronsky & Company.-Early years:Agronsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 12, 1915...

, later a famous American television journalist.

On various occasions, Agron served as envoy of the World Zionist Organization

World Zionist Organization

The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...

. He was a member of the Jewish Agency delegation to the UN conference in San Francisco. In 1949-1951, Agron headed the Israel's Government Information Service. In 1955, he was elected mayor of Jerusalem. He remained in office until his death in 1959. During his term, he played a key role in the development of the western sectors of the city.

Commemoration

Agron Street in downtown Jerusalem and Beit Agron (headquarters of the Israeli Press Association) are named after him.