Meir Pa'il

Meir Pa'il was born in 1926 in Jerusalem

Meir Pilevsky, later Pa'il, was born in Jerusalem in 1926 to Nahum and Bracha Pilevsky, pioneers of the Third Aliyah. He studied at the Tahkemoni school in Jerusalem, a school for laborers' children in Holon, and Balfour high school in Tel Aviv. In 1937 he joined the Working Youth movement and was active in a Haganah signal unit.

He served in the Palmach from 1943 to 1948 and took part in the Night of the Bridges and other operations. In the 1948 war he served in the Negev Brigade. As a career officer he commanded the 51st Battalion in the Sinai campaign, the officers school and the General Staff department of combat doctrine, and he retired in 1971 as a colonel.

He studied history and Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University and earned a doctorate in military and general history. He wrote books on Jewish defense forces, the Palmach and 1948.

In 1973 he founded the Blue-Red Movement, which called for a Palestinian state beside Israel and merged into Moked. He was elected to the Knesset in 1973 as Moked's only member, and again in 1977 for the Left Camp of Israel. In May 1980 he left the Knesset under a rotation agreement. He died in 2015.