Yishai Zimmerman, a reserve IDF officer who earned the Medal of Valor and fought in nearly every one of Israel’s wars, from the raids of Unit 101 to Operation Protective Edge, has died at 93.
He was born in October 1933 and grew up in the fields of Kibbutz Ein Harod. When the kibbutz split, he went on to Ein Harod Ihud. He was drafted in 1952 and became a tank commander in the Armored Corps’ 82nd Battalion. But when Unit 101 was formed, he volunteered, joining his kibbutz classmate Meir Har-Zion in the small, daring force that carried out Israel’s early retaliatory raids. When Unit 101 was folded into Sayeret Tzanhanim, the paratroopers’ reconnaissance unit, Zimmerman served there as an officer.
In November 1955, near Nitzana, he led a force in Operation Har Gaash. His actions in that battle earned him the Medal of Valor.
The wars kept coming, and so did he. In the Sinai Campaign he fought as a support company commander, and later joined the 80th Brigade’s reconnaissance unit. In the Six-Day War, he was shot in the hand in the battle for Jerusalem. In the Yom Kippur War, he served as an officer in the 582nd reconnaissance and anti-tank battalion of the 317th Brigade and took part in Operation Abirei Lev, the crossing of the Suez Canal.
Long after most men his age had put away their uniforms, Zimmerman kept showing up. Well into old age, he served in the reserves as a tank transporter driver, taking part in the Second Lebanon War and Operation Protective Edge.
Off the battlefield, he was active in the protest movement against the Disengagement Plan. In his later years he worked with metal, and competed several times in the Technion’s Technorace, taking first place more than once.
