Shmuel Gonen

Shmuel "Gorodish" Gonen (Hebrew: שמואל גונן‎‎; 1930 – 30 September 1991) was an Israeli general and Chief of the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War.

Born in Vilna, Poland, Gonen immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine with his family at the age of three. He served in the Haganah at fourteen, and participated in the battles over Jerusalem in Israel's War of Independence, being wounded five times.

After the war, he remained in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), rising through the ranks of the Armored Corps. He commanded a tank company during the 1956 Sinai Campaign, and was awarded the Medal of Courage. He was later charged with overseeing the integration of the new Centurion tank into the IDF, and later commanded the first battalion composed of these tanks.

In 1966, he was appointed commander of the 7th Brigade. It was in this capacity, during the Six-Day War, that he led his troops from the Rafah salient right up to the Suez Canal. After the war he delivered a famous speech, entitled "My Glorious Brothers, Deserving of Fame", which included the famous line: "We looked death straight in the face, and it lowered its eyes at us."

Throughout his army years, Gonen was not well liked by his subordinates, who viewed his methods as unjust and Draconian. He was known to set especially low speed limits for the men of his brigade, only to flout these speed limits himself. It was also documented in a popular Israeli book "חשופים בצריח" ("Chasufim Batzariach", "Exposed in the Turret") that he would deliberately cause his men to fail inspections and then punish them for it. He was overly strict, often meting out severe punishment to soldiers accused of minor offenses such as failure to polish their boots. His subordinates often requested a transfer to a different unit.

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