Aluf David Ben Ba'ashat (Hebrew: דוד בן בעש"ט; born 1950) is a general in the Israel Defense Forces and until July 26, 2007 was the commander of the Israeli Navy. Born in Israel, he has received a B.A. in Economics and Business Management from the University of Haifa, and studied at the United States Marine Corps College for a year in the early 1970s. Ben Ba'ashat began his military career as a draftee in 1970, but then volunteered to attend the naval officer's course. Through the 1970s he commanded a number of vessels including a Saar 2 and a Saar 4 missile boat. During the 1980s he moved into the area naval instructional, and from there he continued to advance up the chain of command, becoming the Israeli Navy's Chief of Staff in 2002 and commander in September 2004.
As Naval Commander, Ben Ba'ahsat has recently had to deal with Palestinian arms smugglers moving equipment by boat from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.
Famous quotes containing the words david and/or ben:
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth’s lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)