<meta charset="utf-8"></meta>Major General Israel Tal (res.), one of the Israel Defense Force's most prominent commanders and military theorists, died Wednesday, after suffering from a prolonged illness.





Tal, who was a week shy of his 86th birthday, is known as the "father" of Israel's main battle tank, the Merkava, and served as the commander of the IDF's Armored Corps during Israel's "War over the Water" in the 1960s, as well as the commander of the armored division which broke through the northern Sinai in the Six Day War.