Dagan, Avraham

Born in Morocco and immigrated to Palestine at the beginning of the War of Independence. As soon as he arrived, he enlisted in the Palmach Company in the Fourth Battalion, the “Alfortzim” battalion of the Palmach Harel Brigade. Yosef Shachar, the commander of the class in the Palmach, says: “Avraham was a challenge for me, he was a charismatic leader of the Palyam soldiers who came from Morocco, and I had to take the Bren from the floor , Charging, stepping and placing an eye on the sights within 4 seconds, and Avraham did the exercise in 2.5 seconds and turned to me and said, “Now we will see you.” I do not know how I managed to perform the exercise in a second and a half. His friends in the unit remember him as most courageous and “looked like a man who was in a state of battle.” On March 31, 1948, Avraham’s platoon left Ma’asanei Eli and settled in the outposts at the top of Shaar Hagai to protect a convoy of supplies that had organized in Hulda on its way to besieged Jerusalem.The convoy was attacked not far from where it left, The security force returned to its base, and when they began to retreat towards the base, Arabs mounted the outposts and fired automatic weapons with retreating force. “The commander of the class, Yosef Shachar, tells the story of the battle in which Avraham fell:” At the summit of Neve Ilan, Where the whole company with the entire battalion lay about 200 people, and there was nothing left to lie down. And they are jumping on us from the opposite ridge. As I lie down in the place where I have chosen, I see Abraham standing there looking for a place. I shouted to him: ‘Abraham lay down, lay on people. Lay down ‘. He was not lying. He had a bullet in the lower abdomen. He was the only person killed in the operation and the first casualty of the company. “Abraham was brought to eternal rest in the Kiryat Anavim military cemetery, and Avraham was the first Palmach soldier to be buried in Kiryat Anavim