Meir Zorea

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Meir Zorea, 1958

Meir (Zarro) Zorea ( Hebrew מאיר זורע; * March 14, 1923 as Meyer Zarodinsky in Chișinău , today Moldova ; † June 24, 1995 ) was a major general ( Aluf ) of the Israel Defense Forces and a member of the Knesset . During the Second World War he was highly decorated as an officer in the British Army . Zorea also distinguished itself during the Israeli War of Independence . He was one of the founders of the Tnu'a Demokratit LeSchinui (known by the Hebrew acronym Dash), an initially successful center party that did not have a long life in the long run.

Early years

Meir Zorea was named Meyer Zarodinsky ( Hebrew מאיר זארודינסקי) was born in Chișinău, which was then temporarily part of Romania . In 1925 his family emigrated to what was then the British League of Nations Mandate Palestine and settled in Haifa . Here his name was changed to Meir Zorea. In his youth he was a member of the Boy Scouts . At the beginning of World War II, Zorea joined the Hagana at the age of 16 . He also joined the Notrim , a Jewish police unit in Palestine, whose members were almost exclusively recruited from the Hagana, as a cadet.

In 1942 Zorea joined the 20 th Palestinian Jewish Company established by the British Army's Buffs Regiment (Royal East Kent Regiment) and, after 1944, the Jewish Brigade . In the winter of 1944-45, this brigade took part in heavy combat operations against Wehrmacht troops on the Senio River near Bologna in northern Italy , which were concluded victoriously after a period of two months. Zorea, who at that time was in the rank of Second Lieutenant ( lieutenant , lowest officer rank in the British Army), was awarded the Military Cross in recognition of having led his troops through the most violent fire. At the time of dissolution of the Jewish Brigade in 1946 Zorah held the rank of captain ( Captain ).

After the end of the war, the Jewish Brigade was used as a facade to smuggle weapons for various Jewish underground organizations in the then League of Nations mandate in Palestine. Members of the Jewish Brigade were involved in various retaliatory actions against Nazis and their collaborators . To make these actions possible, members of the Jewish Brigade traveled in groups of three or four across Europe in the immediate post-war period. Regarding these acts of revenge, Zorea stated that they only liquidated those directly involved in the murder of Jews. The Jewish Brigade also took an active part in efforts to illegally immigrate survivors of the genocide, particularly those from Poland ( Beriha ), to Palestine. About this Zorea later noticed that they had thrown a net over the whole of Europe, which at that time was populated by five million stray people of all countries and beliefs, and they had directed the current towards Palestine. Zorea was involved in all of these actions.

Military career in Israel

Most members of the Jewish Brigade were called to arms in senior military positions prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. At the time, the former members of the Jewish Brigade were the only ones who had received formal military training. During the Israeli War of Independence, Zorea was battalion commander. He was later appointed to the General Staff as head of the training department. He also served as the commander of the Israel Defense Forces Officers School.

In 1953 Zorea said goodbye, but returned to the army three years later. He was first appointed deputy commander of the Panzer Corps , and later its commander. He was then reappointed to the General Staff, but had to resign and leave the General Staff as early as 1959 as a result of the so-called Night of the Ducks , a mobilization exercise that ended in a debacle. On April 1, 1959, a surprise exercise to mobilize the reserve was to take place. The radio-transmitted code word of the call for mobilization was "water bird", which is why the subsequent scandal went down in history as the "night of the ducks". The surprise was so complete that the whole country panicked and the armed forces of neighboring Arab countries were put on high alert. A committee of inquiry had identified Zorea as one of the main culprits. He was transferred to the Israeli Northern Command , of which he was in command until 1962. While serving in the north of the country, now major-general , he ordered the Golani Brigade to operate outside the borders of Israel for the first time, a role that until then had only been assigned to the Paratrooper Brigade.

Civil life

After Zorea had finally said goodbye in 1962, he withdrew to the kibbutz Ma'agan Micha'el , which he co-founded , where he was able to combine his life as a farmer with other public activities.

Political activity

Zorea continued to participate in the public life of the State of Israel. In 1973 and 1974 he was the ombudsman for Israeli soldiers. He was the director of the Israel Land Authority in 1976 and 1977. Although originally a member of the left-wing Mapam party , he founded the Tnu'a Demokratit LeSchinui (Dash), a group with Jigael Jadin , Amnon Rubinstein , Shmuel Tamir , Meir Amit and others secular party at the center of the political spectrum, composed mainly of former members of the Israeli Labor Party and the Likud .

In the course of the 1977 elections, in which Dash won 15 seats and thus became the third largest parliamentary group, Zorea was elected to the Knesset. Dash became part of the coalition government under Menachem Begin and Zorea was a member of several parliamentary committees. Shortly after the formation of the government, Dash began to show signs of disintegration, and a year later, in 1978, Zorea resigned from his seat in the Knesset.

In the mid-1980s he was a member of the commission of inquiry charged with investigating allegations against Israeli soldiers that they had illegally killed two captured terrorists on intercity bus 300.

Zorea died in 1995 at the age of 72.

Web links

• Meir Zorah on the website of the Knesset (English)