The Legacy of Aviezer Ya’ari

My daughter‑in‑law’s Saba passed away last week. He may have been a true Israeli hero, but to Sigal and all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren he was Saba (grandpa) Avik. And yet his death was barely noticed by the English‑language press here in Israel, if at all, although it was major news in the Israeli media.

Major-General Aviezer Ya’ari was 96 years old, and he was laid to rest at Merhavia – the kibbutz where he was born – with full military honors. Hundreds of people attended the funeral and six Major-Generals representing different branches of the Israel Defense Forces carried his casket.

He was already the second generation in Merhavia. His father, Meir Ya’ari, was one of the historic leaders of the “Hashomer Hatzair” movement and the founder of the Mapam labor movement, whom David Ben‑Gurion of the Mapai labor movement did not want to include among the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Meir came to Merhavia in 1929 as a young man with his wife Anda. (Golda Meir, by the way, also settled to Merhavia – her room there is a memorial, but it is smaller than Meir Ya’ari’s memorial.)

Mapai and Mapam were both labor‑Zionist parties, but they embodied two distinct strands within the Israeli left. Mapai, led by David Ben‑Gurion, was the dominant center‑left force in early Israeli politics — a pragmatic, security‑focused socialist Zionist party that prioritized state‑building and gradual reform. Mapam, by contrast, represented a more radical Marxist‑Zionist current: strongly egalitarian, committed to Arab–Jewish political equality, and consistently more dovish in its foreign‑policy positions.

The fact that his father was a co-leader of Mapam initially stood in the way of Aviezer Ya’ari’s advancement in the IDF, as Ben-Gurion did not want him serving in IDF Intelligence, but he was eventually assigned to the IDF Intelligence Research Department.

Ya’ari had a career in the IDF that is best described as stellar, serving in a number of command positions. His legacy is best known for his independent thinking before the 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out. In the days before the war, Ya’ari spoke to the head of the Northern Command and said that Egypt and Syria intended to attack Israel. He was severely reprimanded for this by his superiors for going behind their backs. They insisted that Egypt and Syria were simply carrying out regular maneuvers, which meant nothing. (He never forgave his superiors for this.)

Subsequently, the Agranat Commission, an official National Commission of Inquiry appointed by the government to investigate the circumstances leading to the outbreak of the war, praised him.

Ya’ari served in the end as the head of the IDF Intelligence Research Branch. His last post was as the head of the National Security College. He retired from the IDF in 1987, as a Major-General after 39 years of service.

But his involvement with the IDF did not end there: up until 2000, he served in the office of the State Ombudsman, where he published a number of reports on the issues of national security, including the 1992 report on the Tzeelim IDF training exercise where five soldiers were killed, as well as reports on the lack of national preparedness in case of a chemical attack on Israel. At his funeral, he was described as a loving father and grandfather, as well as one of the best thinkers in the IDF intelligence.