Shmuel Harlap, donor behind Israel's largest healthcare gift, dies at 82

Shmuel Harlap, one of Israel's best-known businessmen and a major benefactor of medicine and science, died at his home on 18 August 2026 at the age of 82. Calcalist and Ynetnews reported his death the following morning, and eJewishPhilanthropy published a longer tribute a week later.

Born in 1944, Harlap studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he later taught, and earned a doctorate in philosophy at Harvard. In the early 1980s he joined the family business founded by his father, Amichai, and as chairman from 1982 turned Colmobil from an importer of Mercedes cars into Israel's largest vehicle importer, adding Mitsubishi and later Hyundai. He was also an early and significant investor in Mobileye, the Jerusalem driver-assistance company that Intel bought for $15.3 billion in 2017. Alongside business he wrote columns on economics and society for Haaretz and TheMarker and ran three full marathons, the first in New York at 60.

In 2025 Harlap and his wife, Anat, gave $10 million to the Weizmann Institute of Science to help rebuild laboratories damaged by Iranian missile strikes. Shortly afterwards they pledged about 600 million shekels, roughly $180 million, to the Rabin Medical Center's Beilinson campus in Petah Tikva, the largest donation ever made to Israel's health system at the time. The money is building a 15-storey centre for cardiac and neurological care, due to open in early 2027 with hundreds of new beds. The couple declined to put their name on it and called it the Tower of Hope, which the hospital described as a place open to everyone regardless of religion or background.

Harlap was also a central supporter of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, where colleagues said its national security policy programme would not have existed without him. After the 7 October 2023 attacks he donated 120 cars to families displaced from communities near Gaza. He is survived by Anat, two children and seven grandchildren.