Dan Tolkowsky, former air force commander and Israeli tech pioneer, dies at 104

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dan Tolkowsky, the fifth commander of the Israeli Air Force and later a key figure in the development of Israel’s high-tech and venture capital sectors, died overnight Friday in his home in Tel Aviv at the age of 104.

Tolkowsky, who led the IAF from 1953 to 1958, was born to a venerable Zionist family in Tel Aviv in 1921. His father, Shmuel, was a pioneering Zionist agriculturalist, and his maternal grandfather, Isaac Leib Goldberg, helped found some of the earliest Zionist communes in Ottoman Palestine.

Tolkowsky joined the Haganah — the IDF’s paramilitary forerunner — when he was 15. He moved to London in 1938 to study mechanical engineering and volunteered for Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1942, during the Second World War. After training in Africa, he served as a Spitfire pilot in Italy, southern France, and Greece.

Tolkowsky continued to work as an engineer in Britain after the war and helped the Haganah acquire the aircraft that formed Israel’s air force. He joined the Israeli Air Force after it was established following Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. That same year, he also married his wife Miriam.

During the War of Independence, Tolkowsky carried out IAF bombing campaigns on the Egyptian front.

He held several top roles in the force after the war, including head of its training division between 1948 and 1951, and later chief of staff — a role akin to a deputy to then-air force chief Haim Laskov — between 1951 and 1953.

He became the head of the IAF in 1953, at the age of 32.

During his tenure, he oversaw the introduction of the first jet aircraft in the IAF, and he led the corps through the 1956 Sinai Campaign.

In an obituary published by the Israeli Air Force, Tolkowsky was quoted as describing then-IDF chief Moshe Dayan’s decision to prioritize the air force due to its successes in the campaign.

“I got on a Dakota plane with Lt. Gen. Moshe Dayan… and we took off to the ending ceremony. During the flight, Dayan took me and said: ‘After what I saw in the operation, the IDF’s priorities will from now on be air force first, the armored corps second and paratroopers third.’ I was very happy about this development,” said Tolkowsky, according to the IAF.

Tolkowsky handed over the command of the IAF in 1958 to Ezer Weizman, who would go on to be Israel’s seventh president.

After his role in the military, Tolkowsky headed the Defense Ministry’s Planning and Scientific Research Administration until 1959.

After leaving the defense establishment, Tolkowsky became a prominent business and technology leader.

He served as CEO of Discount Investments, making some of the earliest investments in Israeli technology.

Together with business partner Uzia Galil, he also helped found Elron Ventures, which established what became major Israeli arms maker Elbit and medical technology firm Elscint, which in 1972 became the first Israeli company to trade on the then-recently founded NASDAQ.

In 1985, Tolkowsky founded Athena, the first venture capital fund in Israel, together with his son Gideon, who was a recent Wharton graduate, and American Jewish venture capital pioneer Fred Adler, for whom Gideon had worked in the US.

Tolkowsky was called back into public service in 1997 to serve in the Ciechanover investigative committee that probed the Mossad’s botched assassination attempt of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Jordan.

In 2023, at the age of 102, Tolkowsky was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by President Isaac Herzog. At the ceremony, according to the IAF, he told Herzog: “I still dream of taking the tech industry forward here in Israel.”

Tolkowsky’s wife, Miriam, passed away in 2015. He is survived by three children, including Gideon, as well as nine grandchildren and many great-grandchildren, the military said.

Tolkowsky will be buried on Monday in Tel Aviv.