Yekutiel Adam - Biography

Yekutiel "Kuti" Adam (November 3, 1927 – June 10, 1982) was an Israeli general and former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces.

He was born in Tel Aviv, Israel to Yehuda and Elisheva Adam (formerly Adamov). He was named after his grandfather, who was killed in combat in 1919. His family were Mountain Jews from the Caucasus region.

At the age of 15, Yekutiel joined the Haganah. At 20, he became a commander.

On May 1, 1948, he was one of the commanders who captured the Palestinian village Salame, to the south of Tel Aviv. He later joined an elite Haganah unit that conducted raids into enemy territory.

In March, 1950, Adam married and built a house in Tel Aviv. At that time, he became an officer in the IDF, with the rank of lieutenant. Adam rose quickly through the ranks. In 1952, he became a captain in the Givati Brigade. Then he went on to command the Be'er Sheva bloc as a lieutenant colonel.

He went on to study in the war academy in France in 1964-66 and returned to assume the rank of colonel. In the Six-Day War, he served under Ariel Sharon, proving his worth. Following the war, he became commander of the Golani Brigade. The Golani Brigade was responsible for keeping the peace in the north during the War of Attrition. During this time, Adam was promoted to brigadier general and served as the vice commander of the IDF's Northern Command until the end of the Yom Kippur War.

In 1974, Adam was moved to the Sinai where he became a major general and eventually went on to head the Southern Command.

He was the commander of the Operation Entebbe, the 1976 raid at Entebbe airport in Uganda.

In 1978, he went to the United States to study and returned to become the Deputy Chief of Staff, under Rafael Eitan, and head of the Directorate of Operations.

In 1982, Adam went to the USA again to study, this time in Berkeley, but came back to Israel after Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced Adam's appointment to as head of the Mossad, in relacement of Yitzhak Hofi. Yekutiel Adam was killed in action at Beaufort Castle, Lebanon in 1982.

Yekutiel Adam was buried in Kiryat Shaul cemetery, Tel Aviv. A street was named after him in Ashkelon, and a main road in North Jerusalem. The Israeli Institute of Technology has named the Adam Yekutiel soil-machine laboratory after him.

His son Udi Adam has followed in his father's footsteps becoming a Major General in the Israel Defense Forces and later was appointed commander of the Northern command.

The IDF base called Adam Facility (Mitkan Adam), home to the Israeli Counter Terror School and other training facilities for Sayarot, shooting and sniping is named after Yekutiel Adam.

Further reading

• Michael Oren, Six Days of War (Oxford, 2002), ISBN 0-345-45912-4, pp. 182, 212.