Shlomo Hillel, a Baghdad-born Israeli operative who in the late 1940s and early ‘50s used bribes, fake visas, and a network of smugglers to move more than 120,000 Jews from Iraq to Israel, died Feb. 8 at his home in Ra’anana, Israel. He was 97.

Mr. Hillel was just 23 when the Haganah, a paramilitary organization sent him undercover to Iraq. There, disguised as an Arab, he helped smuggle small number of Jews to Israel in trucks. Later he devised a ways to smuggle thousands in an operation called Michaelberg. Using various other disguises and with the help of an Iraqi travel agency, he arranged 950 flights, called Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, with 124,000 Jews migrating to Israel.

In 1988, Mr. Hillel received the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian award. He served in the Knesset from 1952 to 1959, and then in diplomatic posts. He returned to the Knesset in 1969, was elected speaker in 1984, and stayed until he was defeated in 1992.

TV host Larry King died Jan. 23 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87. In a career spanning six decades, King interviewed a staggering number of celebrities, political leaders, and public figures. He rose to national fame with the launch in 1978 of “The Larry King Show” before moving over to CNN for “Larry King Live,” which ran from 1985 to 2010, when he was famously replaced by Piers Morgan. The chat show was cancelled in 2014.

In a statement, Ora Media said that King “viewed his interview subjects as the true stars of his programs, and himself as merely an unbiased conduit between guest and audience.”

Ezra F. Vogel, an eminent scholar of East Asia at Harvard University whose writings about modern politics and society in China and Japan helped shape how the world understood the rise of those two Asian powers, died Dec. 20 in Cambridge, MA. He was 90.

In 1979, as Japan was ascending as an economic power, Professor Vogel published the book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. It was as provocative title for a book in which he outlined in no-nonsense prose how and why Japan had caught up with, and in some cases had surpassed, the United States. Among the reasons he cited were Japan’s ability to govern and educate its citizens efficiently, and to control crime.

Two decades and several books later, Professor Vogel embarked on a comprehensive transformation of yet another ascendant Asian superpower: China. His lengthy book about Deng Xiaoping is one of the most in-depth biographies to date of the leader who had shepherded China out of the chaos of the Mao years, said The New York Times. The book won the 2012 Lionel Gelber Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, among other honors.

Dr. H. Jack Geiger, who ran away to Harlem as a teenager and emerged a lifelong civil rights activist, helping to bring medical care and services to impoverished regions and to start two antiwar doctors’ groups that shared Nobel Peace Prizes, died Dec. 28 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 95.

Dr. Geiger was a co-founder, with Dr. Count Gibson, of community health centers in South Boston and in Mound Bayou, in the Mississippi Delta. They provided desperately needed health care, food, sanitation, education, jobs and social services — what Dr. Geiger called “a road out of poverty.” The centers inspired a national network of clinics that now number more than 1,300 and serve almost 28 million low-income patients at more than 9,000 sites.

Fanny Waterman, the British pianist and teacher who cofounded the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition with Marion Harewood died Dec. 20 at a care home in Ilkley, Yorkshire. She was 100.

The idea of presenting an international music competition in 1960s Leeds, a gritty industrial city in northern England, seemed risky. But Ms. Waterman, a Leeds native, believed in the vitality of her hometown, and was certain she could draw support for the venture. The first Leeds competition took place in 1963, with the composer and conductor Arthur Bliss as chairman of an eminent jury. It was an immediate success, with 94 entrants from 23 countries.

She was appointed dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005. In 2015, at 95, she retired from the Leeds Competition. “I do hope and pray,” she said at the time, “that in another 100 years, our competition will have the reputation it has now.”

Sheldon Adelson, who built the world’s largest empire of casinos and resort hotels in Las Vegas, Macau, Singapore and other gambling meccas, died Jan. 11 at his home in Malibu, CA. He was 87. He had built a fortune estimated by Forbes in 2019 at $35.1 billion, and used his wealth to promote right-wing political agendas in America and Israel.

In Israel, where he had a home and owned major conservative media outlets, Mr. Adelson supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. He opposed statehood for Palestinians, favored Israeli settlement in occupied territories, and underwrote junkets to Israel by congressional Republicans. Reportedly, he spent $67.7 million to buy the former U.S. ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv. It was the largest amount paid for a home in Israeli history and appeared aimed at making it more difficult for future presidents to reverse the Trump administration’s move of the U.S. Embassy in Israeli to Jerusalem in 2018.

Mr. Adelson and his wife contributed hundreds of millions to medical research, education and other philanthropies in America and Israel. According to the New York Times, Mr. Adelson first visited Israel in 1988, wearing the shoes of his father, a Lithuanian-born Jew who had never made the trip.

Public relations veteran Howard Rubenstein, who for decades polished and protected the images of New York celebrities and power brokers, from George Steinbrenner to Donald Trump, has died. He was 88.

Rubenstein founded Rubenstein Associates in 1954 after dropping out of Harvard Law School. He eventually earned his law degree from St. John’s University in 1959, and took a six-month break from the PR industry to serve as assistant counsel to Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Agency clients have included Rudolph Giuliani, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Marv Alpert, Kathy Lee Gifford, the New York Yankees, News Corporation, Columbia University, New York Philharmonic, Sarah, Duchess of York, Rupert Murdoch, Fred Trump, and the Metropolitan Opera Co.

Rubenstein was also instrumental in making the New York City Marathon one of the World Marathon Majors.