Uri Ilan

Uri Ilan was born in 1935 in Gan Samuel

Uri Ilan was born in 1935 in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. His parents were Shlomo Ilan and Fayge Ilanit, who later served in the First Knesset for Mapam. He was a great-grandson of Rabbi Shimon Shkop.

He joined the Golani Brigade in July 1953. On December 8, 1954, he took part in Operation Zarzar, a mission to service a wiretapping device on a telephone line inside Syria near Tel Faher. The five soldiers of the squad were discovered and captured, then held separately in Mezzeh prison in Damascus.

According to the accepted account, he feared he would reveal secrets under torture and hanged himself in his cell on January 13, 1955. Notes were found on his body, one reading "I did not betray, I committed suicide." A version based on Syrian claims says he had revealed the secret before his death.

He was buried in Gan Shmuel, where Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan quoted the words "I did not betray" at his funeral. Nathan Alterman wrote a poem about him, and a street in Kiryat Shmona bears his name. In 2005 an archive named after him opened at Bar-Ilan University.