Benny Peled
Benjamin "Benny" Peled | |
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Operation Entebbe | |
| Other work | President of Elbit Systems |
Benny Peled (
).Biography and career
He was born Binyamin Weidenfeld in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine, and Hebraized his name to Peled. His father, Arie Weidenfeld, was a member of a family who came to Israel during the First Aliya from Romania, and settled in Rosh Pinna. His father worked in the public works department of the British mandate government and was responsible, among other things, for building airfields. His mother, Yona Weidenfeld (né Gurfinkel), came from Poland in 1925. Peled was the eldest son, and had a younger brother and sister.
Peled studied in Gymnasia Herzelia and his teachers included Shaul Tchernichovsky, Yehuda Burla and Zvi Nishri, who educated him in the spirit of Zionism and democracy.[2] After a brief term as a teenager with a British Mandate Palestine military police unit, he started as a mechanic in the beginnings of the Israeli Air Force. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War he had assembled the first Messerschmitt Bf 109 which had arrived in Israel dismantled.[3] He then became a pilot and fought in the Independence war.
After the war, he was one of the pioneers of the jet age in the IAF. He commanded the first
Peled was a base commander during the 1967
Post-military
In 1978, Peled became the president of Elbit Systems, a position he held until 1985.
Peled was played by John Saxon in the film Raid on Entebbe (1977).[5]
References
- ^ a b c "Maj-Gen Benjamin Peled". The Independent. 2002. Retrieved 2008-11-09.[dead link]
- ^ Peled, Benny (2004). Days of Reckoning. Modan. p. 11.
- ^ ISBN 0-517-58790-4.
- ^ "Major-General Benjamin Peled". 17 July 2002.
- ^ "Raid on Entebbe". IMDB. Retrieved 2008-11-09.
External links
- "Benny Peled". Find a Grave. Retrieved August 11, 2010.
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