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The Man Who Loved Eretz Yisrael  

Rehavam Amikam Ze'evi was born in Jerusalem in 1926; he was a 
sixth-generation Jerusalemite on his mother's side. He and his 
wife Yael, of Kibbutz Deganiah Bet, had five children, 
19 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. His five children 
all had names with modern Jewish-historic significance: 
Yiftach Palmach, Sayar Binyamin, Massada, Tse'elah, and Aravah. 

Ze'evi joined the Palmach, an elite unit of the Haganah 
forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, in 1944. Five months 
ago, he organized a "birthday party" for the Palmach, and said, 
"The Palmach was an army of barefooted, and happy soldiers who 
made do with little. Their weapons were few and their salaries 
were close to zero, but they never complained or moaned and 
instead carried their nation with high morale and a sense of 
mission. The Palmach was an army that looked for and suggested 
missions, and never said something was impossible. The Palmach 
was a fighting framework of morals and ethics, that made a 
covenant of "the cornstalks and the sword" with the settlement 
enterprise that viewed it as a Zionist and security value. 
The Palmach also engaged in intelligence missions and others 
on behalf of the Jewish nation. The Palmach was a school for 
the knowledge and love of the Land of Israel." 

Ze'evi served in the IDF with its founding in 1948 in many 
positions, including heading the Central Command beginning in 
1968. He retired from the army with the rank of Maj.-Gen, and 
was appointed to be Prime Minister Rabin's advisor on terrorism 
and intelligence in 1974. He also carried out many defense 
missions in various countries, and was elected to the Knesset 
in 1988 as head of the Moledet Party that he founded. He served 
as minister without portfolio in the Shamir government for about 
a year in the early 90's, and became Tourism Minister under the 
Sharon government. 

Former President Weizman said today that although he and Ze'evi 
differed in their political outlooks, "he was a very good friend 
of mine ever since 1948, and he was my aide during the Six-Day 
War [when Weizman served as Chief of Operations of the General 
Staff]. There was no occasion on which we met that we didn't 
embrace each other. He was an outstanding general, well-organized 
and worked zealously to achieve his goals." 

When asked about his lack of a bodyguard, Ze'evi would often say 
that he was his own bodyguard. Sometimes he answered, "All of 
Eretz Yisrael is mine, I will not accept any restrictions." 
When his name was included among the list of Israeli leaders 
slated for assassination by Arab terrorists, he said, "I see 
that I am in good company, with the Chief of Staff and others, 
and this makes me happy." Asked if he was scared, he said, 
"Me?! Do I look like someone who is scared?" 

The name Gandhi was given him when, as a slim youth, he 
masqueraded one Purim with a long white toga and glasses, 
looking like the Indian leader Gandhi. He was known to always 
wear a dog tag with the names of the missing Israeli soldiers. 
He put on tefillin every day, saying that this connected him 
to Jewish tradition. 

Rehavam Ze'evi was also a member of Board of Directors of the 
Eretz Yisrael Museum in Tel Aviv, edited many books published 
by the museum and the Defense Ministry, and graduated the 
USA Army Command & General Staff College. He was the 188th 
victim of what he often called the Oslo War.