Ben-David, Chaim

Son of David and Leah. He was born in Vienna, capital of Austria, on February 6, 1919. He arrived in Israel in 1938 with the core of the Gordonia youth movement. During the War of Independence, he took part in the battle against the Druze in Ramat Yochanan, in operations in the isolated Western Galilee and in Operation Hiram, during which he was appointed the operations officer and later a battalion commander in his brigade. Later, he organized the command base in the north and served as the commanding officer of the command. After serving in various headquarters positions, he was appointed commander of the Golani Brigade in 1955. After that, he became head of the Northern Command and later returned to the Irgun as the head of the faculty administration, and from that position he served as the military secretary of the then Prime Minister and Minister of Defense David Ben-Gurion in 1958. In 1964 he was promoted to the rank of Major General. He died in a plane crash on November 19, 1967. The coffin was placed at the Embassy of Israel in Addis Ababa. The ceremony was attended by representatives of the Ethiopian royal court, the top echelons of the Foreign Ministry, government officials and dignitaries, accompanied by an honor guard of motorcycle riders from the Ethiopian army, who went to the airport and received – a special guard of honor who marched slowly to the special plane of the Israeli Air Force, which was sent to deliver the coffin, which was wrapped in the national flag, to Israel. He left a wife and three sons.