Yekutiel Adam Yekutiel " Kuti " Adam ( ) ( November 3 , 1927 – June 10 , 1982 ) was an Israel i general and former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces . Biography . He was born in Tel Aviv , Israel to Yehuda and Elisheva Adam ( formerly Adamov ) . He was named after his grandfather , who was killed in combat in 1919 . His family were Mountain Jews from the Caucasus region . At the age of 15 , Yekutiel joined the Haganah . At 20 , he became a commander . On May 1 , 1948 , he was one of the commanders who captured the Palestinian village Salame , to the south of Tel Aviv . He later joined an elite Haganah unit that conducted raids into enemy territory . In March , 1950 , Adam married and built a house in Tel Aviv . At that time , he became an officer in the IDF , with the rank of lieutenant . Adam rose quickly through the ranks . In 1952 , he became a captain in the Givati Brigade . Then he went on to command the Be ' er Sheva bloc as a lieutenant colonel . He went on to study in the war academy in France in 1964 - 66 and returned to assume the rank of colonel . In the Six - Day War , he served under Ariel Sharon , proving his worth . Following the war , he became commander of the Golani Brigade . The Golani Brigade was responsible for keeping the peace in the north during the War of Attrition . During this time , Adam was promoted to brigadier general and served as the vice commander of the IDF ' s Northern Command until the end of the Yom Kippur War . In 1974 , Adam was moved to the Sinai where he became a major general and eventually went on to head the Southern Command . He was the commander of the Operation Entebbe , the 1976 raid at Entebbe airport in Uganda . In 1978 , he went to the United States to study and returned to become the Deputy Chief of Staff , under Rafael Eitan , and head of the Directorate of Operations . In 1982 , Adam went to the USA again to study , this time in Berkeley , but came back to Israel after Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced Adam ' s appointment to as head of the Mossad , in replacement of Yitzhak Hofi . He was killed in the 1982 Lebanon War before he could take up his post . On June , 10 , the fourth day of the war , Adam and a group of Israeli officers were commanding operations from an appropriated villa in Dawha near the town of Damour some 12 kilometers south of Beirut . When the area was shelled by Palestinian mortars , Adam and two other officers descended to the basement to take cover . A Palestinian fighter , who was hiding there , opened fire killing Adam and fatally wounding Col . Chaim Sela . Yekutiel Adam was deputy Chief of Staff and thus the highest ranking IDF officer ever to be killed in battle . The identity of Adam ' s killer was never clarified . Some sources identify him as a Palestinian minor . An IDF medic who served in an Israeli military prison during the war witnessed a group of bound and blindfolded Arab prisoners being mistreated by Israeli soldiers during a transport . An officer pointed to a 15 year old boy among the prisoners and said : " You see this boy ? He murdered the late Yekutiel Adam " . The boy ' s final fate is unknown . Yekutiel Adam was buried in Kiryat Shaul cemetery , Tel Aviv . A street was named after him in Ashkelon , and a main road in North Jerusalem . The Israeli Institute of Technology has named the Adam Yekutiel soil - machine laboratory after him . His son Udi Adam has followed in his father ' s footsteps becoming a Major General in the Israel Defense Forces and later was appointed chief of Northern Command . The IDF base called Adam Facility ( " Mitkan Adam " ) , home to the Israeli Counter Terror School and other training facilities for " Sayarot " , shooting and sniping is named after Yekutiel Adam .