Haim Bar-Lev, eighth chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force and most recently Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, was laid to rest Sunday after succumbing to what was described as heart failure Saturday at a Tel Aviv hospital.
Bar-Lev, 69, was admitted to the hospital May 3 after returning home from Moscow in a generally weakened state. The hospital reported that medical tests indicated he suffered from muscular dystrophy.
“He was a noble knight,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said in saluting Bar-Lev at the funeral.
Retired Gen. Shlomo Gazit called him “one of nature’s real gentlemen.”
Bar-Lev’s name became synonymous with a line of fortifications at the Suez Canal built under his aegis when he was IDF chief of staff from 1968 to 1971.
A member of the Labor Party and an advocate of compromise with the Arabs, Bar-Lev switched from military life to polities in 1972, but returned to active duty during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was during that war that the Bar-Lev Line was breached by Egyptian troops.
He was a member of Knesset from 1977 to 1990, serving on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and as chairman of the Knesset subcommittee on the defense budget. He also served as minister of commerce and industry and later as police minister.
Bar-Lev was general secretary of the Labor Party from 1978 to 1984, when he became police minister. He quit the government in 1992.
During his stint as police minister, Jewish terrorists attacked an Arab bus en route from Jerusalem to Hebron, resulting in the death of one Palestinian and the wounding of 10 others. The weapon used was a missile issued by the IDF.
Bar-Lev vowed that Israel would “not acquiesce” in citizens “taking the law into private hands.”
Bar-Lev was born in Vienna on Nov. 16, 1924. He was raised in Yugoslavia, immigrating to Palestine in 1939.
He was a member of the Palmach from 1942 to 1948. During the 1948 War of Independence, he was commander of armored units in the fledgling Israeli army.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whom Bar-Lev succeeded as IDF chief, said, “He always lived up to the Palmach motto: ‘We are always the first!’ And so he was.”
(Contributing to this report was JTA staff writer Susan Birnbaum in New York.)
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