Meir Dagan

Meir Dagan was born in 1945 in Kherson

Meir Dagan was born Meir Huberman on January 30, 1945, on a train near Kherson, to Polish Jewish parents who had fled to the Soviet Union from the Nazis. His maternal grandfather was murdered in the Holocaust. In 1950 the family moved to Israel, lived first in an immigrant camp in Lod, and then settled in Bat Yam, where his parents ran a laundry.

He held a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Haifa and studied painting and sculpture at Tel Aviv University. He was married to Bina and had 3 children.

Dagan joined the IDF in 1963 and served in the Paratroopers. In 1970 he set up and led Sayeret Rimon in the Gaza Strip, and later moved to the Armored Corps. He commanded the Barak Brigade in the 1982 Lebanon War and retired in 1995 as a major general.

He then advised prime ministers on counterterrorism. Ariel Sharon named him head of the Mossad in 2002, and his term was extended several times until Tamir Pardo replaced him. After leaving, he publicly opposed an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

In 2011 he became chairman of Gulliver Energy. He was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2012 and had a liver transplant in Belarus. He died of cancer on March 17, 2016.