Background
His father, Michael Ben Hanan served as one of the top commanders, (Haganah) in Jerusalem.
His father, Michael Ben Hanan served as one of the top commanders, (Haganah) in Jerusalem.
During the Six Days War Ben Hanan was a young Israeli officer, a lieutenant, serving as the operations officer of the 7th Armored Brigade. He was featured on a famous cover of Life magazine after the war which showed him, as a young soldier, triumphantly clutching an Alaska-47 rifle while standing in the waters of the Suez Canal. In 1973, while on his honeymoon in Nepal, then lieutenant colonel Ben Hanan learned of the start of the Yom Kippur War.
Over the course of a few days, he returned to Israel and arrived on the Golan Heights on about October 8, 1973.
Ben Hanan participated in fierce fighting with the Syrians in the holding defence of the Golan Heights along with then lieutenant colonel Avigdor Kahalani, and was wounded for the first time, but refused to be evacuated and continued fighting. Leading his command in a desperate battle against overwhelming numbers of Syrian T-62s, Ben Hanan restored the tactical situation but at the cost of most of his command and his own Centurion tank.
Yossi Ben Hanan later served in the Israel Defense Forces. He commanded the 7th Armored Brigade, the Israel Defense Forces R&Doctorate department, the Israeli National Security College, and the Armored Corps. In 2003, he was the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry"s developing countries defense assistance division, SIBAT.
