1. Ranan R Lurie was an Israeli-American political cartoonist and journalist, a senior associate at the CSIS since 1990, a member of the United Nations Correspondents Association, and founder and Editor-in-Chief of Cartoonews, a current events educational magazine.
Ranan Lurie was born on May 26,1932, the son of Shoshana and Joseph Lurie, who had traveled from Tel Aviv to Port Said, Egypt, at the invitation of Joseph's father to give birth to their first child at his home.
Ranan Lurie's father was sixth-generation Jerusalem-born and his mother seventh-generation.
Ranan Lurie's father was born in 1906, in the new neighborhood of "Yemin Moshe".
Ranan Lurie was a member of the Israeli underground armed organization and was wounded in a battle against the British.
Ranan Lurie later served in the IDF reserves as a Major and company commander.
In July 1954, when Israel and Egypt were still in an official stage of war, Ranan Lurie visited the flagship of an Egyptian navy flotilla anchoring in Venice, pretending to be an Australian journalist, he interviewed the frigate's high ranking enemy officers and took photographs of their newly installed Soviet Radar.
Ranan Lurie described this as an infiltration and won an Israeli journalistic award "For Unprecedented bravery".
About a week before the Six-Day War began, Ranan Lurie had his fine-art exhibit in Montreal.
Ranan Lurie was recruited in the midst of his show to his reserve duty as a Senior Company Commander, a Major in the Fifth Brigade that was commanded by Colonel Ze'ev Shaham.
Ranan Lurie was the political cartoonist for Yediot Aharonot of Israel after which he was invited to become a political cartoonist and cover artist for LIFE magazine.
In 1964, the Prime Minister Levi Eshkol unveiled Ranan Lurie's one-man show of oil portraits at the "Sokolov House" in Tel Aviv, in the presence of Joseph Zaritsky, Reuven Rubin and Meiron Sima.
On May 23,1967, the President of Israel, Zalman Shazar, unveiled Ranan Lurie's one-man show of oil portraits at "Expo 67" in Montreal, Canada.
Ranan Lurie was the in-house political cartoonist for The London Times, Die Welt, Asahi Shimbun and started the first political cartoon for the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, which is one of the oldest newspapers in print.
Ranan Lurie's works were handled by the New York Times Syndicate, King Features Syndicate and Universal Press Syndicate.
Ranan Lurie is probably the only artist who has been invited simultaneously by both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party to hold a one-man show at the US Senate.
Ranan Lurie interviewed, painted, and drew more than 250 world leaders.
Ranan Lurie created his "Uniting Painting", the "Fine Art with a Mission", a contemporary art project that originated from the United Nations General Assembly Building in New York on October 24,2005.
Ranan Lurie became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1974.
At the beginning of 1996 Ranan Lurie created "Cartoon News", an educational magazine that taught current events by introducing mainly political cartoons supported by very short texts.
On May 28,1997, a plaza in Seoul, South Korea was named after Ranan Lurie, who has received the "golden key to the city".
Ranan Lurie was nominated by the Republic of Cyprus for the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, signed on March 14,2002, by Glafcos Clerides, the President of the Republic.
Ranan Lurie is the father of Rod Lurie, a West Point graduate who is a film director and screenwriter.
Danielle Ranan Lurie is a Stanford graduate and a movie director in New York.
Ranan Lurie worked from his studios on the Time Warner Building.
Ranan Lurie appears twice in the Guinness Book of World Records beginning in 1999 as "the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world" and "as a member of the oldest traceable family in existence", which former Chief Rabbi Lau of Israeli and the Jerusalem Institute of Jewish Genealogy concluded that the Ranan Lurie family directly descends from the Royal House of the biblical King David, and can trace its genealogy back to the 10th Century, BCE.
Ranan Lurie published ten political cartoon books and one novel in five languages:.
In 1985, Ranan Lurie created an electronic cartoon animation technique that brought his cartoons to PBS stations and ABC network.
In 1995, Ranan Lurie co-invented an automobile braking system that has a variable light and sound warning, registered as American Patent 5481243.