Ziva Arbel Haleva

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Name Surname : Ziva Arbel Haleva

Date and place of Birth: February 9, 1927 – Edirne, Turkey

Date of Aliya : After graduating from high school when she was 15.5 years old in 1943, she immigrated on her own with the Aliyah HaNoar movement. (Youth Aliya).

Date of death : December 31, 2012

Education : Graduated from high school in Edirne

Profession : The first woman combat officer in Tsahal.

CV:

Ziva A. Haleva joined the Palmach in 1945. After taking various courses, including a communications course in 1948, she fought in the army until the end of the War of Independence.

Ziva left Tsahal in 1949 and married her battalion (Pluga) commander Itamar Arbel. Ziva Arbel, who studied accounting, had three children. It was years later that her children saw the famous photo of their mother holding a gun in the Haganah Museum.

She was the only female warrior beside the 136 male soldiers during the capture of the city of Lod. The image of Ziva Arbel, whose photo was taken by Boris Karmi, a reporter of the newspaper "Mahane", with her leaning her back against a pine tree after a skirmish, with her gun on her waist and "Kafiyah" on her face, turned into the symbol of the "Woman Warrior in the Struggle for Independence".

Ziva Arbel had the honor of lighting the torch on behalf of Palmach at the Yom HaAtzmaut Ceremony dedicated to Israel's heroism (Gvurat Israel) in 1983.

Works, publications : Her book "My Life Story - Young Girl with a Rifle" (HaNaara Im Ekdah - Sipur Hayay), written in 1999, was published in English as well by Natan Shaham in 2001.

Outstanding and Permanent contribution /reasons for nomination: As a representative of the Youth Aliyah and Zionism from Turkey, with her exemplary combatting in the War of Independence and her special personality, Ziva Arbel is among the influential people who contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel.