Eli Cohen

Eli Cohen was born in 1949 in Jerusalem

Cohen was born in 1949 in the German Colony of Jerusalem to a family that came to Israel from Tunisia. He grew up in a religious home.

He earned a BA in mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MBA from the University of West London.

After the Six-Day War he joined the IDF and volunteered for the paratroopers, where he became a platoon commander. In the Yom Kippur War his engineering company was the first to cross the Suez Canal. In 1984 he chased and killed an attacker holding a grenade in Jerusalem and was wounded in the blast.

He was deputy head of the Ma'ale Adumim council, a Betar emissary in Canada and head of the Settlement Department of the World Zionist Organization. He entered the Knesset in 2002 in place of Yehoshua Matza and lost his seat in 2003. He then served as ambassador to Japan and wrote books in Japanese on Israeli and Japanese culture.

Cohen holds a 5th degree black belt in Shotokan karate and led the Israel Shotokan karate organization. From 2010 to 2013 he chaired the executive board of Ariel University. In 2018 he received the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan.