Pnina Pinhasi, only woman to fight in Israel's naval commando unit, dies at 97

Pinhasi, a Holocaust survivor, fought in War of Independence with Palmach and joined unit that later became elite Shayetet 13, where her son and grandchildren also served

Pnina Pinhasi, a Holocaust survivor who was the first and only woman to serve in Israel’s naval commando unit, died last month at 97.

Pinhasi’s death was reported by the Ynet news outlet on Sunday.

Born in Poland in 1928, Pinhasi moved with her family to France and survived the Holocaust as a teenager hidden in a ward for children suffering from tuberculosis, Ynet reported. When the war ended, Pihasi learned that her mother had been murdered by the Nazis.

After the war, she worked in a displaced persons camp. She immigrated illegally to British Mandate Palestine, where she landed in Haifa and was placed in an internment camp, according to Ynet.

In 1947, she joined the naval branch of the Palmach, the elite strike force of the Hagana, Israel’s pre-state militia. The following year, she was recruited as the only woman in a Mossad unit meant to block arms shipments to Arab armies.

From there, she completed a course in maritime intelligence and sabotage, becoming the only female fighter in the divers’ unit. After the war, the unit became part of what is now Shayetet 13, the elite commando force of the Israeli Navy.

"אשת הדממה": לוחמת השייטת היחידה הלכה לעולמה בגיל 97 https://t.co/jKTOzLT6cT

— אורנה רודי Orna Rudi (@OrnaRudi) August 10, 2025

Relatives said she did not speak often about her service, but a book about Shayetet 13 said that she faced challenges as the unit’s only woman.

She “had difficulty integrating into the course; the men didn’t like her presence,” the book said, according to Ynet. “She understood that her presence as a woman in this field appeared to hurt their manliness, and she felt that many wanted her to fail — which only pushed her more to succeed.”

The unit is also where Pinhasi met her late husband, Reuven, with whom she settled in the coastal agricultural community of Mikmoret after the war. The couple had four children, 10 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

All four of her children served in the Navy, one of them in Shayetet 13. Two grandchildren also served in the commando unit, becoming the third generation of their family to do so.

“If there’s an important lesson to learn from Savta, it’s not that she was the first and only woman in Shayetet 13,” said one of her grandsons, Tom, according to Ynet. “It’s the fact that when the state needed her, she did what came naturally.”