Levi Eshkol
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Levi Eshkol (1895-1969) was Israel's second prime minister and served during the victory of the 1967 Six Day War.
Eshkol was born to a traditional Jewish family in a Ukranian village near Kiev. At the age of 16, he joined a Zionist youth group and three years later came to Palestine, which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire, where he worked as an agricultural laborer and a political activist.
During World War I he volunteered for the Jewish Legion of the British Army, and later joined the group that founded the Degania Bet settlement in the north near the Kinneret.
In 1940, Eshkol joined the Haganah, the predecessor of the Israel Defense Forces, and in 1947 organized a recruiting drive. After the state was established in 1948, Eshkol served as first Director-General of the Defense Ministry.
From 1951 until 1963, Eshkol served as minister in the government, and in June 1963, he succeeded David Ben-Gurion as prime minister.
Ahead of the Six Day War, Eshkol formed a national unity government, which included Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin, to deal with the crisis.
Eshkol played an instrumental role in finding alternative sources of military supplies, particularly in the U.S., after France imposed a military boycott on Israel before the war.
He died in office on February 26, 1969 of a heart attack
