Avigdor Kahalani

Avigdor Kahalani was born in 1944 in Ness Ziona

Kahalani was born in Ness Ziona in 1944. His parents, Moshe and Sarah Kahalani, were immigrants from Yemen. As a teenager he studied mechanics at the ORT school in Jaffa.

He earned a B.A. in history from Tel Aviv University and an M.A. in political science from Haifa University. He also studied at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and graduated from Israel's National Defense College.

He joined the Armored Corps in 1962 and rose through the 7th Brigade. He was badly burned in the Six-Day War and commanded the 77th Battalion on the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War. He later led the 7th Brigade and other formations and left the army as a brigadier general in 1989.

He entered the Knesset for the Labor Party in 1992 and served as deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. With Emanuel Zisman he founded the Third Way, which won 4 seats in 1996. He then served as Minister of Internal Security in Benjamin Netanyahu's government until 1999, when the party did not pass the threshold.

He was charged with offenses including breach of trust and was acquitted in 2001 and again in 2002. From 2007 to 2015 he chaired the Association for Wellbeing of Israeli Soldiers. In 2023 he lit a torch at the Independence Day ceremony.