David Bannett

David Rephael Bannett (; 29 October 1921 – 26 January 2022) was an American-Israeli electronics engineer, a pioneer in radar technologies in the Israel Air Force, a clandestine buyer for the Haganah in the US, one of the first engineers in the Israeli electronics industry in the country's first years, and the inventor of Shabbat elevators. Bannett was the first lecturer of electronics in the Department of Physics at Bar Ilan University and the Jerusalem College of Technology and was one of the founders of the Beit Hazon neighborhood in Kfar Haroeh.

Biography David Rephael ("Daniel") Bannett was born in New York, to William and Esther (Tack) Bannett, both born in the US. He learned at a public school and in the afternoons studied at a Talmud Torah. When he reached bar mitzvah, he began to keep mitzvot. In 1937, he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School at age 16 and studied mathematics, physics and engineering at the City College of New York. During World War II, he worked in the United States Army as a radar systems instructor, a technology that was classified and innovative at that time. Before the 1947–1949 Palestine war, he was recruited as a clandestine buyer for the Haganah.

Bannett immigrated to Israel in 1949 with his two children and wife, Esther Chana, who united with her family in Israel. president of the United Mizrachi Women in Washington Heights, and Shemaryahu Cohen Margolis, from the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem, who escaped to the US with the outbreak of World War I and headed the World Mizrachi Movement there. He later became one of the heads of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Israel and a Yakir Yerushalayim.

Bannett was recruited to the Israel Defense Forces in a civilian position, serving as a "chief technical radar officer" for several years.

Bannett was the first electronics engineer at Tadir, a company that later merged with Ran, becoming Tadiran. He later worked at Elco, advising the security industry, the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak) and Mossad. Bannett was known as a shofar blower, with a record of 82 continuous years in this position.

Purchasing in the service of the Haganah and the Israel Air Force Based on his expertise in radar, which Bannett acquired as a radar instructor in the U.S. Army during World War II, he was recruited by the Haganah as a radar expert and joined Teddy Kollek's team in New York. He opened a radar course for Haganah fighters who were studying in the US and started up a business for purchasing radar and communication devices from the US army's surplus. At the time, the US had placed an embargo on supplying military equipment to the fighters in the War of Independence, so all purchasing activities were clandestine under the cover of legal activity. Among other things, Bannett smuggled a barge with diverse military equipment, including dismantled P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft, onto a boat outside the USA's territorial waters, with the equipment registered in his name. The barge was intercepted by the FBI's coastal guard and Bannett was forced to escape from the US for a while until the case subsided. When immigrating to Israel in 1949, and following his service in the Haganah, Bannett was appointed the Israel Air Force's chief technical radar officer, a position he filled until the mid-1950s.

Personal life and death Bannett was married for 75 years to Esther Chana, from 1945 until her death in 2021. They had four children. Bannett lived in Beit Hazon, in Kfar Haroeh, where they moved to in 1953.