Ze'ev Almog

Ze'ev Almog was born in 1935.[1] By May 25, 1967, he held the rank of major and commanded the submarine Leviathan on a nonstop voyage to Israel. During the passage, two crew members went onto the deck to erase the vessel's identifying number for operational reasons. After releasing their safety cable, they were swept overboard by a wave.[2] The search failed to recover them; one body was found on the Irish coast three weeks later, while the other crew member was never found.[2]

At the conclusion of the Six-Day War, Almog received command of Shayetet 13, the Israeli Navy's elite naval commando flotilla. He later recalled the unit's performance during that war as a "miserable failure," a retrospective judgment that shaped his approach to rebuilding and sharpening the unit.[3] Almog noted that Shayetet 13 had remained clandestine for years and was permitted to wear its distinctive "bat wings" insignia only from 1959 onward. Training with French marine commandos had begun two years earlier, after which information about the unit's existence began to leak.[3]

Under his command, Shayetet 13 conducted significant Gulf of Suez operations, including the raid on Green Island's Egyptian radar posts and Operation Escort, in which two Egyptian torpedo boats were sunk.[3]

By the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Colonel Almog commanded the Israeli Navy's Red Sea arena.[4] The Navy's missile boats operated in the Mediterranean, leaving the Red Sea theater with smaller defensive vessels.[5] Two days before the war began, Almog sent two patrol boats on a reconnaissance mission into the Gulf of Suez and warned their crews: "There's a good chance that during this patrol you'll find yourselves in a war."[4]

When war broke out on October 6, Almog's forces pursued offensive operations against Egyptian positions and vessels in the Gulf of Suez. Shayetet 13 conducted a series of operations codenamed Magavit around Ghardaqa. Magavit 10 ended without sinking a vessel; Magavit 11 destroyed an Egyptian missile boat, and Magavit 16 destroyed another.[6]

In his retrospective account, Almog described the Navy's overall Yom Kippur War performance as historic: Israel fielded 14 missile boats against 24 operated by Egypt and Syria combined, yet destroyed or captured 44 vessels while losing none of its own, and faced 60 sea-launched missiles.[5] The naval campaign helped secure passage for approximately 200 merchant ships traveling to and from Israel, and Almog characterized it as the first missile battle in naval warfare.[5]

On October 24, 1973 — the war's final day — Almog reached the Egyptian port of Adabiya aboard Israeli patrol boats and helped armored and infantry forces capture the port, which also housed the Egyptian naval arena command headquarters.[6] His forces departed aboard a tank landing craft carrying 1,500 Egyptian prisoners, including the Egyptian naval arena commander, and took several captured vessels and a fuel platform.[6] Summarizing the war's outcome, Almog urged continued readiness rather than complacency, writing that naval commandos and sappers had undertaken missions involving deep penetration into enemy bases and "daring and imaginative action" whose results were "entirely out of proportion considering the small number of troops."[7]

Ze'ev Almog served as Commander in Chief of the Israeli Navy from 1979 to 1985.[8] He later identified April 22, 1979, as the date he took office — the same day that the Nahariya terrorist attack killed members of the Haran family and police officer Eliyahu Shahar.[9] Almog characterized that attack as the last fatal assault to reach Israel from the sea, and wrote that there had been no fatal sea- or coastal-terrorist incursions for approximately 40 years by the time of his later publication.[9]

A central challenge of his tenure was persuading the military establishment to abandon a reactive posture in favor of proactive strikes against terrorist infrastructure. He described having difficulty convincing Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan to shift policy from waiting for maritime infiltrators to attacking them at their bases.[3] Once that shift was approved, Almog directed operations using Shayetet vessels capable of reaching Tyre and Sidon, supported by missile boats and submarines operating in Lebanese waters.[3] In his 2011 article, he reported that 80 operations were conducted against terrorists between 1979 and 1984, that 23 ships were captured and seven sunk in Lebanese harbors, and that the campaign ended deadly terrorist infiltrations from the sea — figures and assessments presented as his retrospective account rather than independently verified findings.[5]

Almog called Operation Peace for the Galilee, the 1982 Lebanon War, the largest direct naval assistance to ground troops in IDF history. He reported that approximately 54 vessels participated, that the Navy landed 388 armored fighting vehicles and 604 paratroopers in the operation's first ten days, and that total figures reached 4,469 people and 1,087 vehicles landed or transported — all without naval casualties or vessel damage.[5] Chief of Staff Eitan praised Shayetet 13 commandos for their performance in Lebanon, saying, "I simply love them; they deserve a citation," and the unit received a Chief of Staff citation for its operations during the period.[10]

Almog was also closely involved in long-range naval procurement planning. His 2011 article described how, in September 1979, following the peace agreement with Egypt, the General Staff decided to build 24 missile boats and six submarines in response to the growth of Arab naval capabilities following the Yom Kippur War.[5] He argued that this program was implemented too slowly and at reduced scale, attributing the shortfall to delayed decisions, bureaucratic obstacles, resistance to doctrinal change, and rising system costs rather than budget constraints alone.[5] He presented the Sa'ar 5 missile boat and the Dolphin submarine as complementary elements of the planned strategic response.[5]

Following his retirement from the Navy, Almog moved into industrial leadership. In 1986, after Israel Shipyards petitioned for the appointment of a liquidator amid heavy debts, Almog — a retired rear admiral and former Navy commander — was appointed to the role.[11] Under his direction, the workforce was reduced to 240 employees by the time of privatization in 1995. He is also credited with conceiving the Shaldag, a small, fast naval vessel; the shipyard's first post-privatization deal was to build Shaldag boats for Sri Lanka.[11]

After retiring from active service, Almog continued to engage with questions of Israeli naval strategy through writing and commentary. His article "Israeli Naval Power: An Essential Factor in the Operational Battlefield," published in Military and Strategic Affairs (Volume 3, No. 1, May 2011) by the Institute for National Security Studies, presented the sea as strategic depth for Israel rather than merely an auxiliary arena for coastal defense.[5]

Central to his argument was Israel's dependence on maritime trade: he cited statistics showing that 98 percent of the country's cargo passes through maritime space and emphasized the concentration of population and infrastructure along the coast as reasons the Navy should protect sea lanes and contribute directly to national defense.[5] To illustrate the threat from the sea, he described an October 1979 exercise in which an attacking force of 12 missile boats, two submarines, and nine Shayetet 13 squads practiced an assault on Israel's coast. Despite a coastal detection system with 58 permanent infantry observation posts, and despite the Air Force knowing the timing of the attack in advance, the exercise's assault was not stopped.[5]

The article closes with the phrase "a view beyond the horizon and precise fire on a desired target."[5]

In 2011, Almog offered a retrospective critique of the Israeli raid on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara. He proposed placing two ships alongside the vessel, gathering passengers at the stern, and using water hoses to clear a boarding area so commandos could confront those resisting the boarding without lethal force. He criticized the operation's planning, observing: "You should always have alternative back-ups. I always did." As an example, he cited his practice of allowing up to two and a half hours for Shayetet 13 frogmen's approach swim to Green Island, although the crossing would normally take 50 minutes, to account for unpredictable currents.[12] These assessments were his own retrospective views on a contested episode.

Almog also argued that the Navy's maritime counterterrorism experience demonstrated the value of small, highly trained special units over large formations and distant, massed fire. He presented the model as one that could be adapted to Gaza, advocating repeated incursions by specialized infantry supported by forces held in reserve.[9] These arguments were his policy positions rather than a neutral strategic consensus.

A separate individual bearing the same name, Ze'ev Almog, was a retired lieutenant colonel and pioneering submarine commander. He accompanied the first submarines to Israel, commanded the submarine Livyatan, and later headed the Israeli Naval Officer Academy in Acre for nearly 23 years.[13] This Ze'ev Almog was among those killed in the October 4, 2003, suicide bombing at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa — a terrorist attack carried out by Henadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old Palestinian woman from Jenin, for which Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.[14][15] The bombing killed 21 people, including four children, and wounded 58 others.[14]

Members of the Almog family spanning three generations had gone to lunch at the restaurant that day. The retired lieutenant colonel Ze'ev Almog, his wife Ruth, their son Moshe, and grandsons Tomer and Assaf were among those killed, while their daughter Galit, daughter-in-law Orly, and two other grandchildren were wounded.[15] The two individuals named Ze'ev Almog are distinct persons and should not be confused.