Yekutiel Adam
Yekutiel Adam | |
---|---|
Relations | Major General Udi Adam (son) |
Other work | Appointed head of the Mossad but passed away during the 1982 Lebanon War before he could take office. |
Yekutiel "Kuti" Adam (
Childhood and marriage
He was born in Tel Aviv to Yehuda and Elisheva Adam (formerly Adamov). He was named after his grandfather, Yekutiel Ravayev, who was killed in combat defending Petah Tikva from Arabs in 1916.[4] His family were Mountain Jews from the Caucasus region.
In March, 1950, Adam married and built a house in Tel Aviv.
Career and education
At the age of 15, Yekutiel joined the Haganah. At 20, he became a commander.
On May 1, 1948, he was one of the commanders who captured the Arab village of Salame in the south of Tel Aviv. He later joined an elite Haganah unit that conducted raids into enemy territory.[5]
At that time, he became an officer in the IDF, with the rank of lieutenant. Adam rose quickly through the ranks. In 1952, he became a captain in the Givati Brigade. He went on to command the Be'er Sheva bloc as a lieutenant colonel.
He went on to study in the war academy in France in 1964-66 and returned to assume the rank of colonel. In the
In 1974, Adam was moved to the Sinai, where he became a major general and eventually went on to head the Southern Command.[7]
He was the commander of the
In 1978, he went to the United States to study and returned to become the Deputy Chief of Staff, under Rafael Eitan, and head of the Directorate of Operations.[9]
In 1982, Adam went to the United States again to study, this time in Berkeley. He came back to Israel after Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced Adam's appointment as head of the Mossad, in replacement of Yitzhak Hofi.
Death
He was killed in the 1982 Lebanon War before he could take up his post. On June 10 of that year, the fourth day of the war, Adam and a group of Israeli officers were commanding operations from an appropriated villa in Dawha near the town of Damour some 12 kilometers south of Beirut. When the area was shelled by enemy mortars, Adam and two other officers descended to the basement to take cover.[10] A Palestinian fighter, who was hiding there, opened fire killing Adam and fatally wounding Col. Chaim Sela.[11][12] Yekutiel Adam was deputy Chief of Staff and thus the highest ranking IDF officer ever to be killed in battle. The identity of Adam's killer was never clarified. Some sources identify him as a Palestinian minor.[13] An IDF medic who served in an Israeli military prison during the war witnessed an officer point to a 15-year-old boy among a group of prisoners and said: "You see this boy? He murdered the late Yekutiel Adam".[14]
Yekutiel Adam was buried in
Family and legacy
His son
A street was named after him in
is named after Yekutiel Adam.References
- ^ "Yekutiel Adam : A". Armedconflicts.com. 2023-12-11. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ Biography at the Israeli government's official memorial website (in Hebrew)
- ^ "Deputy Chief of Staff Yekutiel Adam at an end of IDF Communication officers Course | Photograph NNL_ARCHIVE_AL990040166700205171 | The National Library of Israel". www.nli.org.il. Retrieved 2024-01-07.
- ^ "אתר ההנצחה לחללי מערכות ישראל".
- ^ "Major General Yekutiel Adam (Adamowitz)". geni_family_tree. 1927-11-03. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ "Adam, Yekutiel (Kuti)". Honor Israel's Fallen. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ "Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres, General Yekutiel Adam and..." Getty Images. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ISBN 978-1-933267-10-4.
- ^ "Yekutiel Adam, a top Israeli military man - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ "Israeli soldiers who fell in Lebanon".
- ^ "How Israeli general was killed". New Straits Times. Jun 14, 1982. Retrieved Sep 18, 2012.
- ^ Coby Ben-Simhon (Mar 6, 2009). "Speak, memory". Haaretz. Retrieved Sep 18, 2012.
- ISBN 0-8184-0438-8
- ISBN 0-7914-0146-4
- ^ "Israel Defense Forces - The Official Website". 2007-03-11. Archived from the original on 2007-03-11. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ "Agricultural engineering facilities". Technion.ac.il. Archived from the original on 2011-09-26. Retrieved 2011-07-13.
- Victor Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception, Chapter 8, pp. 55–56.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-345-46192-4, pp. 182, 212.