Topic: Rehavam Zeevi

Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi (help·info) (Hebrew: רחבעם "גנדי" זאבי‎, born 20 June 1926, died 17 October 2001) was an Israeli general, politician and historian who founded the right-wing nationalist Moledet party. He was assassinated by Hamdi Quran of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), becoming the only Israeli politician to be assassinated during the Second intifada.

Rehavam Ze'evi was born in 1926 in Jerusalem. He joined the Palmach in 1942, and served in the Israeli Defence Forces after the creation of Israel. On May 15, 1948 he was a platoon leader in the lost battle of Malkiyah. His task was to block, with 30 men, the local Arabs who came to help the Lebanese army attack. One of the soldiers from that battle described the view when the sun rose and all the mountain in front of them was black with Arabs. Ze'evi succeeded in his task, but the battle was lost. Instead of destroying the first battalion of the Palmach, that retreated with many wounded, the Lebanese army went after Ze'evi's unit. Ze'evi left a wounded light machine gunner to cover a retreat, took all the weapons and the other wounded people, but left the bodies of the dead behind. From 1964 to 1968 he carried out the duties of the Chief of the Department of Staff in the Israeli General staff. The next 5 years he served as the Commander of the Central Military District (Hebrew: אלוף פיקוד המרכז). He retired in September 1973, only to rejoin the army at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War (October 6, 1973). A close friend of IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar, he was appointed "Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff" and was rarely away from Elazar's side during the Yom Kippur War. Ze'evi was a highly efficient staff officer, in contrast to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, and encroached somewhat into the latter's duties during the war. Ze'evi then served for several more months as the Chief of the Department of Staff. He finally retired, with the rank of major-general (אלוף) in 1974.

In 1974 he became Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's consultant on combatting terrorism. The following year he was appointed as the prime minister's adviser on matters of intelligence. Ze'evi resigned from this position in 1977, when Likud's Menachem Begin became prime minister. In 1981, Ze'evi was appointed the director of the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel-Aviv. In 1987, he co-edited a series of books describing various aspects of the Land of Israel, based on artifacts from the museum. Ze'evi is famous for having one the largest collection of books about Israel and its history.