Avraham Lanir

Michal's uncle, Aryeh Polonsky, was a member of the Hagana organization and was murdered by assassins from the Etzel in 1939.

The couple had two children, Noam (who became a successful businessman) and Nurit.

Avraham "Avi" Lanir (January 25, 1940 – October 1973) was a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Air Force.

He was the highest-ranking Israeli fighter pilot to fall into enemy hands.

His image was engraved in the Israeli consciousness as a heroic figure, as a man who gave his life under severe torture in captivity in Syria and did not divulge the secrets of the state in which he was trusted - secrets that probably touched on the subject of "the weapon that Israel never admitted to exist".

For this act he was given the medal of courage.

Avraham Lankin (later Lanir) was born in 1940 in Herzliya.

His parents Yaacov and Malka were active members in the British Mandate era militant group Etzel.

His father went on to become a senior member of the Shin Bet.

His uncle, Eliyahu Lankin, was the commander of the weapons ship Altelena.

Lanir studied at several schools, with the family following his father's employment relocations throughout Israel.

In 1954, the family moved to Washington, D.C. in the framework of Lanir’s father’s work in the service of the state of Israel.

When Avi Lanir was 17, he returned to Israel with his family and for the year which remained before his enlistment he studied electronics at the Israeli Air Force’s technical academy.

This was the first aerial abandonment of this model in the service of the Israeli Air Force since the aircraft entered service in 1956, after several successful abandonments in other air forces.

Lanir enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 1959, training to become a fighter pilot.

As a cadet in a pilot course he excelled throughout the course and later became known for his coolness and perfect performance during an exercise that simulates falling into captivity.

In August 1962, Lanir married Michal Barzilai.

Barzilai's family was close to Mapai and had ideologies opposite to that of Avi's family.

In 1963, when he was serving as an instructor at a flight school, his plane, a Fuoga Magister type, collided with a Sud Aviation Vautour plane during a night flight over the area of the meteorological station in Beit Dagan.

Lanir managed to abandon the plane, which was not equipped with an ejection seat, but the camper sitting in the front seat was killed when the plane crashed near Kibbutz Givat Brenner.

In 1965 Lanir was sent to study electrical engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in 1969.

He was thereafter appointed to test pilot the "Technolog," the prototype that preceded the IAI Kfir.

He flew the Dassault Mirage III with 117 Squadron and on April 6, 1967, scored his first aerial kill in a major skirmish along the Syrian border which ended with the downing of six Syrian jets.

Lanir, flying Mirage 60, downed a SAF MiG-21 with cannon fire after closing in to a distance of 200 meters.

The MiG exploded and Lanir flew right through the fireball, covering his aircraft with soot.

Initially blinded, enough soot was eventually blown off his canopy to afford Lanir a safe landing at Ramat David.

The scorched aircraft earned the nickname "Black Mirage", and Lanir flew it once again during Operation Focus on June 5, 1967, when he participated in a strike against the Egyptian air base at Fayid.

The aircraft was lost 2 days later over Iraq.

After the Six-Day War Lanir converted to the Dassault Super Mystere which he flew as the senior deputy commander of 105 Squadron during the War of Attrition.

In 1971, Lanir was assigned command of 101 Squadron, operating the Dassault Mirage out of Hazor.

He scored his second aerial kill on November 9, 1972, downing a Syrian MiG-21 while flying Mirage 72.

On October 12, 1973, a week after the Yom Kippur War began, Lanir scored his third and last aerial kill, downing a Syrian MiG-17 in the vicinity of Kuneitra while flying Mirage 58.

During the Yom Kippur War, on October 13, 1973, around 11 A.M., Lanir was launched for an interception mission deep in Syrian territory.

He was most probably not present at the squadron's morning briefing, and was not aware of the location of the mobile missile batteries that the Syrians placed during the night.

On his way back to Israel, Lanir and his deputy were caught in a missile ambush.

Lanir's Mirage was hit in the rear by an SA-3 surface-to-air missile and began to burn.

Lanir managed to steer his damaged plane westward until he had to abandon it over Israeli territory.

Unfortunately, a strong westerly wind swept the parachute towards the Syrian forces.

Lanir arrived safely on the ground in the area of Mazraat Beit Jinn.

Israeli armored soldiers from the 188th Armored Brigade saw him parachute but mistakenly thought he was a MiG pilot.