Amos Yarkoni

Yarkoni was born in 1921 in Na’ura, near Afula, and belonged to the Bedouin al-Mazarib tribe.[3][1] English-language sources render his birth name in several ways, including Abd el-Majid Hidr and Abd al-Majid Khader.[4][1] He remained Muslim after adopting the name Amos Yarkoni.[1]

In the late 1930s, while living near Na’ura, he formed friendships with members of the Jewish farming community of Nahalal. He had encountered them as a teenager while shepherding near fields they guarded and began cooperating with them after concluding that local Arab gangs threatened Arab families as well as his Jewish friends.[4]

Hidr was subsequently expelled from his community as a traitor and ordered to sign a letter admitting that he had aided the Zionist enemy. After he refused, he was sentenced to death. The day before his scheduled execution, he and two companions escaped from the pit where they had been confined.[4]

In 1947, while working as a messenger at the oil refineries near Haifa, Hidr witnessed an attack by Arab workers on Jewish co-workers. The National Library of Israel account gives the toll as 39 Jews killed and 51 wounded and says the violence followed an Irgun grenade attack that killed six Arab workers.[4] It reports that Hidr later told Maariv that the episode led him to conclude that the Jews were a small people in need of help and that he tended to aid the weaker party in a fight.[4]

At the end of 1948, Hidr enlisted in the IDF after contacting his friend Oded Yanai of Nahalal, who recruited him to the newly established Minorities Unit.[4][3] After completing military training, he became the first Bedouin to complete the IDF squad commanders’ course.[3][1] He was discharged after a year but was called back five days later to serve in a special unit.[3]

During his early military years, he adopted the name Amos Yarkoni. One account connects the change to killings and revenge killings among Bedouin and Druze communities and says he chose “Yarkoni” because its Hebrew root evokes green, a meaning associated with Hidr or Khidr in Arabic.[4] Former Shaked commander Shlomi Gruner offered a different explanation: using Yarkoni’s birth name while operating among Bedouin tribes from Jordan and Egypt could have created problems connected with blood feuds.[1]

Yarkoni commanded a camel-mounted unit that fought infiltrators and smugglers along Israel’s borders. In 1953, he completed officers’ training with distinction and moved to a reconnaissance unit serving the Central and Southern Commands.[3][1]

His ability to read tracks became well known among colleagues and commanders. Rechavam Zeevi recalled that Yarkoni once corrected his attempt to follow infiltrators who had taken cows: the animals had nibbled grass, while the weeds Zeevi had mistaken for their food were bitter.[4] Moshe Dayan was also counted among Yarkoni’s close friends.[4]

Yarkoni later joined and commanded Sayeret Shaked. When the unit transferred to Southern Command in 1955, it comprised 25 men: ten Bedouin and Druze trackers and 15 veteran paratroopers and Golani soldiers nearing the end of their service. Yarkoni led it for about six months before receiving an official appointment.[3] The unit guarded Israel’s borders against infiltrators and smugglers.[1] An encyclopedia entry describes its mission as tracking fedayeen entering the Negev from Jordan and Egypt.[5]

Yarkoni was wounded several times. In May 1955, during a clash near Ashkelon with terrorists who had infiltrated from the Gaza Strip, he lost a hand but refused evacuation and continued fighting.[3][1] In 1964, he was wounded in the leg during an ambush against infiltrators from Egypt. After three months in hospital, he told Central Command chief Zvi Zamir that he lacked the strength to continue and asked for a younger commander to take over; Benjamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer succeeded him.[3]

Gruner credited Yarkoni with developing a pursuit method in which one team followed footprints while another drove ahead—sometimes as much as 20 kilometres—to locate the trail again. Gruner said helicopters were later used for airborne pursuit and called Yarkoni “the father of tracking and pursuit doctrine.”[1][2]

Yarkoni received the Medal of Distinguished Service, three citations for bravery, and the Yigal Allon Prize for his contribution to Israel’s security.[3] He was described as the first Bedouin to reach a senior rank in the IDF.[3][1] After the Six-Day War, he was appointed military governor in Sinai.[3][6] He left the IDF in 1969 as a lieutenant colonel.[3][1]

After retiring from military service, Yarkoni became head of the Minorities Unit and a liaison to the Bedouin community in the Ministry of Housing.[3][1] He lived with his family in Beersheba, where his children attended local schools.[4]

At his farewell to Shaked, Yarkoni described himself as a liaison between Arabs and Jews, urged the young soldiers to learn Arabic, and said the border would not remain forever. He continued working toward reconciliation and coexistence after retirement.[4]

Yarkoni died on February 7, 1991, after a serious illness. He was buried in the Muslim section of Kiryat Shaul Military Cemetery in Tel Aviv in a coffin draped with the Israeli flag.[3][1] Six brigadier generals carried his coffin, and President Chaim Herzog attended the funeral, which took place during the Gulf War.[3] He was buried at Kiryat Shaul at Rechavam Zeevi’s request.[4]

Decades after his death, veterans of Sayeret Shaked continued to gather annually at his grave to honor his memory and military legacy.[1][2]

Accounts differ on aspects of Yarkoni’s biography. One explanation connects his adopted name to intercommunal revenge killings and its association with the color green, while Gruner attributed the change to the danger that Yarkoni’s identity could create during operations involving blood feuds.[4][1] Ynet accounts also identify his postwar governorship as either northern or central Sinai.[3][6]

Yarkoni’s family reportedly encountered discriminatory treatment. One account says commanders questioned whether his military service made a son acceptable for security-sensitive duties and that another son was not called up for compulsory service until Yarkoni insisted.[4] A separate Ynet report says his son Yossi was rejected by an elite IDF unit because of his background and that his daughter was directed to a health-fund branch in East Jerusalem when she sought work in Jerusalem.[3]

Gruner recalled that Yarkoni’s comrades had to campaign for him to be buried inside the military cemetery’s fence.[1] Ynet also reported that about two years after his death, the Military Rabbinate refused to permit a Jewish soldier to be buried beside him, prompting public criticism and objections from Yarkoni’s widow.[3]

Reference sources place Sayeret Shaked within somewhat different chronologies. Encyclopedia.com dates its formation to the 1950s and credits Yarkoni with forming it, while the Jewish Virtual Library groups regional-command reconnaissance units with a trend that emerged during the 1960s and early 1970s but gives no specific formation date for Shaked.[5][7] The broader account therefore does not establish a direct unit-specific contradiction.