Yossi Ben Hanan

Yossi Ben Hanan was born in 1945 in Jerusalem

Yossi Ben Hanan was born in Jerusalem on February 23, 1945. His father, Michael Ben Hanan, was a Haganah commander in Jerusalem and hosted a morning exercise radio program. His mother, Sarah Ben Hanan, was an educator and wrote readers and children's books.

At 16 he joined the military boarding school at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa. He later graduated from the IDF Command and Staff College in 1971 and a US Army armor course at Fort Knox in 1975. He earned a master's in public administration from Harvard in 1980 and an MBA from Stanford in 1981.

He joined the Armored Corps in 1963. In the Six-Day War he was operations officer of the 7th Brigade, and a photo of him in the Suez Canal appeared on the cover of Life magazine. In the Yom Kippur War he led a force formed from the remains of the 188th Brigade on the Golan Heights, was wounded several times, and was rescued by a Sayeret Matkal force under Yoni Netanyahu.

After the war he commanded the 7th Brigade from 1977 to 1979 and headed R&D at the Defense Ministry from 1982 to 1986. He was chief armored officer from 1986 to 1990, then commander of the military colleges with the rank of Aluf, and retired in 1994.

From 1997 to 2008 he headed SIBAT, the Defense Ministry's defense export division. In November 2008 he became head of the Defense Ministry delegation in Europe, based in Paris. He is a father of 3.