Amir Drori

Amir Drori was born in 1937 in Tel Aviv

Amir Drori was born in Tel Aviv in 1937 and grew up in Pardes Hanna, where his parents had settled in 1933. He completed the first class of the military boarding school beside the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa. He married Tzila, and they had 3 children.

He was drafted in 1955 and served in the Golani Brigade, fighting in the Sinai campaign, the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition. He commanded Golani from 1972 to 1974, including in the Yom Kippur War, where he was badly wounded on Mount Hermon. He later led the 36th Division, Northern Command during the Lebanon War, and the ground forces command, and became Deputy Chief of the General Staff in 1986.

The Kahan Commission, which examined the Sabra and Shatila massacre, made no recommendations against him. After Dan Shomron was chosen as Chief of the General Staff, Drori left the army in 1987.

In the early 1960s he studied archaeology at the Hebrew University and joined the Masada excavations led by Yigael Yadin. In 1988 he became head of the Department of Antiquities, which became the Israel Antiquities Authority in 1990 with him as director until 2000. His tenure saw clashes with Haredi groups over digs at burial sites, and he received threats on his life.

He died in 2005 of a heart attack during a hike in the Negev. Streets in Holon and Jerusalem and the excavations at the Roman theater in Tiberias bear his name.