Miko Peled

Miko Peled was born in 1961 in Jerusalem

Avraham "Miko" Peled was born in Jerusalem in 1961 and grew up in Motza Illit in a Zionist family. He was named after his grandfather, Avraham Katznelson, who signed Israel's Declaration of Independence. His father was General Mattityahu Peled, and his brother is the political scientist Yoav Peled.

After high school he joined the Special Forces and earned the red beret, but he soon gave up that status and became a medic. The 1982 Lebanon war turned him against his service.

In 1983 he skipped a Peace Now rally in Jerusalem to attend a karate class, and Emil Grunzweig was killed there by a grenade. He turned to karate, which took him to Japan and later to San Diego, where he settled with his family. From 1989 he owned and taught at Martial Arts America in Coronado, California, and sold it in 2012 to focus on his book The General's Son.

In 1997 his niece Smadar was killed in a Palestinian suicide attack in Jerusalem, and he returned to activism. He joined a Palestinian and Jewish-American dialogue group in San Diego. He came to support one democratic state with equal rights instead of two states, and he describes Israel as an apartheid state.