Tamir Pardo

Tamir Pardo was born in 1953 in Jerusalem

Pardo was born in 1953 in Jerusalem to a Sephardi Jewish family. His father Yosef, an architect, came from Turkey, and his mother Rivka, a Holocaust survivor, came from Belgrade. He grew up in north Tel Aviv and later graduated from Tel Aviv University in political science and history.

He enlisted in the IDF in 1971 and served with the paratroopers. After a signals officers' course he joined Sayeret Matkal and took part in Operation Entebbe as the radio operator of Yoni Netanyahu. He later served as signals officer of the Shaldag Unit.

Pardo joined the Mossad in 1980 and commanded an operational unit from 1989 to 1993. In 2002 he became one of the deputies of Mossad chief Meir Dagan. In 2006 he was loaned to the IDF as a brigadier general and advised the General Staff on operations during the 2006 Lebanon War.

He returned to the Mossad in late 2007 and resigned in June 2009 after Dagan's term was extended. He then worked in business with Noam Lanir. He headed the Mossad from 2011 to 2016, when Iran's nuclear program was a central concern.

In 2016 he cofounded the cyber defense company XM Cyber, which was bought by the Schwarz Group in 2021. He has publicly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called on him to step down over his indictment. In 2023 he said Israel runs an apartheid system in a territory where two peoples live under separate laws.