Meir Pa'il

Meir Pa'il (Hebrew: מאיר פעיל‎‎; 19 June 1926 – 15 September 2015) was a colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, an Israeli politician, and military historian.

Biography

Born in Jerusalem during the Mandate era as Meir Pilevsky. His parents, Nahum and Bracha Pilevsky, were pioneers of the Third Aliyah. Pa'il studied at the Tahkemoni school in Jerusalem, a school for laborer's children in Holon, and at Balfour high school in Tel Aviv. He joined the "Working Youth" movement in 1937 and served in an active signal unit for the Haganah. Pa'il served in the Palmach from 1943 to 1948. He participated in a series of operations, including the smuggling of illegal Jewish immigrants from Syria and Lebanon, the Saison, the Night of the Bridges, and an attack on a British police position on Mount Canaan. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Pa'il served in the Negev Brigade. Pa'il served as a career officer in the IDF, commanding the 51st Battalion during the Suez Crisis, the Bahad-1 officers school from 1964-1966, and the Department of Military Theory for the General Staff. He left the IDF in 1971.