Asa Kadmoni, the recipient of Israel's highest military honor - The Medal of Valor - remains, in death as he was in life, Israel's unreconciled and unrequited hero. A born leader, natural soldier whose intuition and strategic grasp were second to none, he was transformed by force of circumstances into a fiery leader of civic protest, a challenger of Israel's colluding political and military establishments.

Childhood

Asa was born in Tel Aviv, then still in British-mandated Palestine, in 1942. His parents have come to Palestine from Poland shortly before the outbreak of WW2, with the rest of the family eventually perishing in the fires of the Holocaust.

Like many Jewish children of his generation with gaps in their families, Asa was haunted by the Holocaust and the apparent ease with which the genocide was perpetrated. As an adolescent he will seek out and swallow accounts of the Jewish partisans operating from Poland's thick woodland, in addition to a regular reading diet of military literature both classical and modern. In his moment of greatest peril, in the battle of Seraphium in the Sinai on October 17 1973, facing alone the inexorable progress of Egypt's Third Army, he will recall these partisans, his predecessors, and wonder if they had felt the same when about to be overrun by the overwhelming German forces.

Asa was one of old Tel-Aviv's sand boys, the kids who practically lived on the beaches and the sand dunes surrounding the still small city. An indisputable leader of gang, the boy Asa distinguished himself by his wilfullness, courage and unbridled imagination. From early on he made up his mind to be a paratrooper, and read voraciously on war and strategy. He had read von Clausewitz and Wingate while still at school, at the same time engaging in a gruelling self-designed program of physical training. He intended to be fit mentally and physically for his draft.

IDF

Asa was called up into the IDF in 1960, volunteering for the paratroopers' corps. Pushing himself and his COs hard, he was quickly taken up for officer training. He completed the training with distinction, and joined Brigade 890 as a junior officer, assuming command of new recruits. As a commanding officer he was hard but caring and committed, and was worshipped by his men, a number of whom will progress to become IDF's top brass. Asa spent the 1960s in the ongoing work of securing Israel's pre-1967 borders from the Feddayin, night-time infiltrators from Egypt and Jordan on a mission to attack Israel's isolated villages and kibbutzim. Asa achieved legendary status in being able to outwit and ambush the guerillas.

However, in 1966, Asa was summarily dismissed from the IDF. He grew too successful and too admired for the brigade's new CO, and was dismissed on a technicality. He could not bring himself to believe that, after six years of total dedication, the IDF would drop him like a hot potato. The Army was his vocation, he had no back-up plans.

He returned to the IDF in the only way he could, as a reservist, doing his outmost to work his way back into career service. In 1968 he sustained an injury during the battle of Karameh, an action against insurgent bases in Jordan; the injury to his left hand will leave him partially disabled for life. Intent on returning to the IDF, he worked through excruciating pain by means of self-designed exercises in order to regain a modicum of mobility to his hand.

That same year he managed to find a way back into the IDF. This time he found himself in the Haruv commando unit, and once again showed himself as the totally dedicated CO. He will spend the next three years with the unit, protecting Israel's expanded borders from the renewed zeal of the infiltrators, now grouped under the newly-formed PLO, trained and equipped by the Russians. However, the previous scenario repeats itself. Asa is too good, and too aware that he is good, and he is showing up his superiors, some of whom are political appointees. Once again, he is dismissed on a technicality.

He retrained as an officer for Israel's merchant navy, and served on several vessels owned by ZIM, Israel's shipping company. At the same time he continued with his reseve duties, sincerely believing that his superlative skills will bring him back into career service with the IDF.

The War of Yom Kippur, October 1973

Asa expected the war that eventually broke out on October 6 1973, maintaining to all who would hear that the defenses on the southern border will not hold against a sustained Egyptian attack. His worst fears came to pass; the defenses and the forts in the Sinai were practically swept away by the advancing Egyptian forces. As a reservist, Asa was summoned to the war.

The first attempt to break through the Egyptian advance had resoundingly failed. Asa and his reseve paratrooper unit were in the second attempt, the one that took the war back to the enemey's territory. The Egyptian forces have retrenched, and an uneasy break has formed by the early morning of October 16th; each force waited to see what will the other do.

Asa was with the group of brigade commander Dan Ziv, out on patrol whose aim was to assess the extent of the Egyptian forces facing the IDF. The patrol was undertaken on the express orders of the brigade commander, against the heated arguments of Asa and several other officers who maintained that they will be walking into an ambush; they were overruled, and the patrol proceeded as ordered. Asa will note in his diary: '... I know full well that we are doomed. This will be the last ride for some of us - the question is only for which ones.'

The partrol had indeed walked straight into an ambush. On the outskirts of Seraphium, a tiny village on a railway line, Egypt's Second and Third Armies had dug in, amply prepared to take out any interlopers. The patrol was engaged, with artillery covering for an advancing infantry; the small Israeli force takes its first losses and is soon scattered.<ref>See Dunstan & Lyles, The Yom Kippur War 1973: The Sinai, Osprey Publishing, 2003, p.84</ref>

Asa finds himself in the courtyard of a small house, with several injured fighters under his care. For the next four hours Asa, on his own, will hold the advancing Egyptians at bay with gunfire, hand grenades and anti-tank missiles, stopping in their tracks the advancing tanks and infantry. In Asa's diary: 'The preparations are over. Truth time is here. It's time to fight. If all of us remain sheltered the Egyptians will be over all the controlling points in a jiff, will coordinate and close down on us from all directions. They have to be stopped as they move. Peace and quiet descend upon me. The din of battle - a sort of background noise - lifts away. I am relaxed and alert. In this jungle - you are the king. I leave the balcony and move into the open.'<ref> The Return from Seraphium, 2006, Baruch Nevo and Nurit Ashkenazi, Sifriat Maariv, Tel Aviv.</ref>

Four hours into the incredible fight, just as Asa thought that he will not manage to hold the Egyptians any longer, the stranded patrol was relieved by Arik Sharon's motorized brigade. That same evening Asa and another surviving officer have confronted the brigade commander over the heavy losses sustained during the ill-advised patrol, and demanded his resignation. Ziv's response was to expel both officers from the brigade, and Asa completed his war service in another unit.

Aftermath: The Protest Movement 1973-1974

Asa returned from the war profoundly shocked by the collusion between the political and military establishments, each all too willing to cover up the other's failures and corruption. Like many Israelis of his and later generations he was brought up on the idea that Israel was a democratic, egalitarian state. What he and many other veterans were now confronting was anything but: venal, corrupt and eager to maintain its hold on the country at whatever cost. An impromptu grassroots protest movement formed, with many veterans joining in as soon as they shed their uniforms. The protesters were demanding that the government take responsibility for the state of unpreparedness in which the country found itself on the eve of the Syrian-Egyptian attack as well as for the many leadership failures in the course of it. Asa, armed with his sense of justice and a hand-painted placard, positioned himself outside the official residence of the Prime Minister, Golda Meir, demanding the resignation of Haim Bar Lev, a senior member of both the military and political eschelons, and the author of the disastrous Bar Lev line in the Sinai. He and Moti Ashkenazi, another Sinai veteran and fellow demonstrator, found themselves by default the leaders of the protest movement.<ref>See Nevo & Ashkenazi, The Return from Seraphium, 2006.</ref>

Golda Meir's government was scandalized at being called to account so harshly, and had no intention of rending account. The Israeli Labor establishment has been in charge of the country from its beginnings and had by this time established an intertwined network of bureaucracy and government that controlled everything from electricity supply to the private sector. Labor governments have ruled the country throughout. Senior figures moved seamlessly from the IDF into government via the Labor party, and into senior civic posts from there. Persons of such seniority as Moshe Dayan, Haim Bar-Lev and Golda Meir were, in this order, untouchable and unaccountable.

Asa, as always, led from the front. He became an iconic leader of the protest movement, dedicating himself fully to the task of challenging the government, arguing with the zeal of a wrathful prophet that the massive loss of life, the glaring errors in preparation for the war and during the war itself had to be accounted for. He was horrified that senior military figures were moving to cover up their own failures and ineptitude, that accounts of battle were suddenly classified top secret, that medals and honor citations were being given to senior commanders whom their subordinates knew to be guilty of gross negligence and outright ineptitude.

The protest movement was left to peter out from lack of funds, political experience and political future. As soon as Golda Meir resigned the movement fell apart.