Lt. Gen. (Res.) Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon
LTG (ret.) Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon has dedicated a lifetime of public service to the State of Israel.
In 1968 he enlisted in the IDF as a paratrooper and participated in the Attrition War. In October 1973 Gen. Ya’alon’s Paratrooper Unit was the first to cross the Suez Canal and continued the fight with the Egyptian forces in Suez. In 1978 Ya’alon commanded the Reconnaissance Company of the Paratroopers Brigade. In the 1982 Lebanon War, he served as part of the Sayeret Matkal team. In 1990 he became Commander of the Paratrooper Brigade and later Commander of the forces in Judea and Samaria. In 1993 he was appointed commander of the IDF training base and commander of an armored division, and shortly after was promoted to Major General and put in charge of Military Intelligence. Gen. Ya’alon then became commanding officer of Israel’s Central Command. Between 2002 until 2005, he served as Israel’s Chief of General Staff (commander of the IDF) during the harrowing days of the war against Palestinian terror, also known as the “Second Intifada.”
After retiring from the IDF, Gen. Ya’alon spent some time at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and became a senior fellow at the Shalem Centre’s Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies.
In 2008, Ya’alon announced his entrance into Israeli politics as a member of the Likud party. The following year, he was appointed as Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs. In 2013, he was appointed Minister of Defense, a position from which he resigned in May, 2016. Three years later, Ya’alon founded Telem, the National Statesmanship Party, and only a few weeks later merged with Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party. On Feb. 2019 Ya’alon and Gantz joined together with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) Party was formed.
Gen. Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon studied at the British Army’s Camberley Staff College and earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Haifa.
In October 2021 Ya’alon joined the Avnon Group as the Chairman of ‘Synaptech’ – Venture Capital.
