Yoel Ben-Porat

Yoel Ben-Porat was born in 1931 in Skalat

Yoel Ben-Porat was born Yoel Weinraub in 1931 in Skalat, in eastern Poland. His father headed the Gordonia movement in the town. His family was murdered in the Holocaust in 1942, and he survived in the ghetto, a labor camp and the forests.

After the war he joined Hashomer Hatzair and sailed to the Land of Israel in April 1947 on the ship Moledet. He was held in the detention camps in Cyprus until December 1947. In the War of Independence he fought at Yad Mordechai and was among the first members of Kibbutz Gazit.

He joined the IDF in 1950 and spent most of his service in the signals intelligence unit, later called Unit 8200. In 1966 he offered his resignation over a translation error that led to an alert, but Aharon Yariv rejected it. He commanded Unit 848 from 1972, and later said his warnings before the Yom Kippur War were ignored.

He served as IDF Spokesperson in 1976 and 1977 and was deputy IDF attaché in Washington. He retired in 1985 as a brigadier general. In 1991 he published the book Neila about the surprise of the Yom Kippur War. He was married to Tzvia and had 2 daughters.