Yom-Tov Samia

Samia was born in the Pardesia transit camp to a Libyan family and grew up in Ramat Herzl in Netanya.[1] He has described his youth as "a battle for survival" and said that he ultimately found purpose and leadership through military service.[1] At age 15 he completed a Gadna squad-commanders course, and by 17 he was serving as a youth-movement leader in Netanya.[1] He holds a Ph.D. in Military Strategy and Political Science.[1]

Samia served in the IDF from 1972 to 2001, rising to the rank of major general.[1] He began in the Paratroopers Brigade, fought in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War, and went on to command the 202nd Paratroopers Battalion, the Givati Brigade, and the Galilee and Gaza Divisions.[1] In 1998, while serving as head of the Southern Command, he received the Tshetshik Prize for Strategic Studies on Israel's Security for research on the organizational climate of IDF field units.[4]

During his tenure as Southern Command chief, Samia developed an operational concept known as the "Pressure Cooker" tactic, which the ICT profile says was later adopted into IDF doctrine.[1] The profile also credits him with a significant role during the First and Second Intifadas and with helping establish the Joint Security Committee with the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords.[1] He was a member of the Israeli negotiation team during the Taba and Cairo talks and served as commander of the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Security Council; Samia later stated that he drew the maps for the Gaza and Jericho agreement in Cairo in May 1994.[5][3]

At the time of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Samia was commander of the Southern Command and part of the army's executive management.[3] He continued serving in the reserves until 2015 and participated in Operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge.[1] During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, he served as deputy to Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman.[6]

A CAMERA backgrounder identifies Samia as the Southern Command officer overseeing the initial investigation of the September 2000 al-Dura incident.[7] It reports that Samia and other senior officers became convinced that Israeli soldiers had not shot Mohammed al-Dura. In October 2000, Israeli physicist Nahum Shahaf contacted Samia to express similar doubts, and Samia agreed to collaborate in a further IDF investigation.[7]

According to a CAMERA timeline, an IDF reenactment on October 23, 2000, reconstructed the Israeli position, the concrete barrel, and the wall sheltering Mohammed and Jamal al-Dura. Soldiers fired at replicas and compared bullet indentations and dust clouds with the original footage.[8] The source reports that the reenactment indicated the barrel would have prevented Israeli bullets from striking the father and son and that the bullet marks and dust clouds pointed toward an area near a Palestinian police position.[8]

On November 27, 2000, the IDF released findings concluding that al-Dura was likely killed by Palestinian gunfire. Samia said the investigation "casts serious doubt" on the possibility that the boy was struck by Israeli fire and that it was "quite plausible" that Palestinian bullets had struck him during the exchange.[8][9] A 2008 IDF letter quoted by the Jewish Virtual Library described Samia's analysis as examining the IDF position, bullet trajectories, the obstacle sheltering the pair, the cadence of fire, the angle of bullet penetration, and the timing of events. The letter stated that these factors allowed the IDF to rule out Israeli fire with the greatest certainty.[9]

Following Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza, Samia became a critic of what he regarded as strategic errors in the withdrawal. He argued that Israel should have maintained a military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor—the strip of land between Gaza and Egypt—to prevent weapons from entering Gaza.[6] He identified the corridor as Israel's first priority and advocated Israeli reoccupation, including clearing three kilometers from Israel's side, until Israel had experienced at least 25 years of peaceful relations with the Palestinians.[3]

In a 2007 presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, Samia stated that more than 30,000 rifles, six million rounds of ammunition, 230 tons of explosives, scores of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, and dozens of mortars had entered Gaza during the preceding two years.[3] He also said Israel knew of more than 130 tunnels between Egyptian and Palestinian Rafah and believed at least as many additional tunnels remained undiscovered.[3] He proposed that Egypt declare a three-kilometer strip inside Sinai a closed military zone to block smuggling, while describing Egyptian-Israeli peace as "a strategic asset for both sides."[3]

Samia reiterated his criticism in 2016, arguing that Israel's security posture over the preceding quarter-century had shifted from proactive operations against terrorist groups to passive defense.[6] He warned against any agreement with Hamas that would permit the organization to dig new tunnels into Israel.[6] In a separate 2016 ICT publication, he described three strategic flaws in the disengagement: abandoning the Philadelphi Corridor, failing to establish arrangements for movement and goods between Gaza, Israel, Judea and Samaria, and Ashdod, and failing to revise Israel's counter-terrorism policy after withdrawal.[10]

After retiring from active service in 2001, Samia moved into the private sector. He served as co-CEO of the Baran Group, later founded a real-estate and strategic-consulting business, and served as director of the Israel Corporation's Energy Division.[1]

In 2007 Samia established IC Green Energy, a renewable-energy and biofuel business whose subsidiaries operated in Israel, the United States, and Germany. These included HelioFocus, Primus Green Energy, Petrotech, and IC-Green Projects.[1] Since April 2019 he has served as General Electric's state manager for natural-gas turbine sales to the Israel Electric Corporation and private producers, and the ICT profile also lists him as chairman of Apollo Power.[1]

Samia chaired the Council for the Regulation of Gambling for three years, during which he increased funding for sports development and launched the "Project of the Decade." The program was responsible for building or renovating ten major sports facilities across Israel, including stadiums in Haifa, Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.[1]

Samia is a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, where he also lectures.[1] He holds additional teaching positions at Netanya Academic College and Beit Berl College and appears regularly as a military commentator in Israeli media. His stated areas of specialization include leadership under pressure, urban counter-terrorism, military and civilian strategic planning, and Israeli-Palestinian security policy.[1]

He has authored three books. From Individuals to Unit, based on his doctoral research, was published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in 2008.[1] Leadership in Moments of Truth appeared in Hebrew in 2014 and in English in 2016. The National Library of Israel catalog describes the Hebrew edition as a 541-page volume published by Contento de Semrik in Tel Aviv and edited by Gershon Giron; it addresses the transformation of individuals into a unit and draws on long-term empirical research and the experience of leaders and commanders.[1][11] His third book, Unity or Dying: The Difficult Journey to Unity with the Help of the Jewish-Zionist-Democratic Compass, was published by Yedioth Books in 2024 under the academic supervision of Asa Kasher.[1] The ICT profile also credits Samia with formulating "seven iron principles" for Israeli strategy toward the Palestinian conflict and advocating a unified Israeli national vision as a means of avoiding internal societal collapse.[1]

Samia joined the Labor Party in 2017 and founded an organization called Citizens for the Advancement of True Leadership.[1] He left Labor in 2018 after becoming dissatisfied with the party's direction and briefly founded the Bihad party ahead of the elections for the 21st Knesset.[1]

Several of Samia's public statements and actions have generated dispute. After Operation Protective Edge, he criticized the award of 72 medals of honor to soldiers who served in the operation, calling the figure "absurd," "scandalous," and a "festival of medals."[12] He also said he had not been invited to postwar investigatory hearings despite serving as Southern Command deputy and dealing directly with the tunnel threat, suggesting that officials were reluctant to conduct serious reviews.[12] His former commander, Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman, disputed this account, saying that everyone who was supposed to be invited had been invited and that contrary claims were being made for personal reasons.[12]

The circumstances of the al-Dura incident and the IDF investigation's conclusions remain historically and politically contested. The account above presents the IDF investigation's position as summarized by CAMERA and the Jewish Virtual Library rather than a full survey of the competing accounts.[7][9]