Zvika Greengold

Zvi Greengold (; born 10 February 1952) is a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officer who fought during the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a tank commander. He is one of only eight people who fought in the war to be awarded the Medal of Valor, the nation's highest medal for heroism. He is a former mayor of Ofakim.

Biography Zvi ("Zvika") Greengold was born and raised on Kibbutz Lohamey HaGeta'ot (, founded by Holocaust survivors of underground and partisan combat against the Nazis). His parents were among the founders of the kibbutz.

Military career On 6 October 1973, Yom Kippur day, twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Greengold was home on leave when Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on two fronts. He was not attached to any unit as he was about to take a course for company commanders. Once he realized war had broken out, he hitchhiked to Nafekh, a command center and important crossroads in the Golan Heights, where he initially helped with the wounded, as no tanks were available. When two damaged Centurion tanks were repaired, Greengold was put in charge of them and, at 2100 hours, was ordered to take hastily assembled scratch crews down the Tapline Road.

Then he spotted the advancing 452nd Tank Battalion. He engaged the enemy, taking advantage of the darkness and moving constantly to fool the Syrians into thinking the opposition was stronger than it was. Greengold destroyed or damaged ten enemy armoured vehicles before the confused Syrians withdrew, believing they were facing a sizable force. At a time when Zvika Force consisted of only one tank, Colonel Yitzhak Ben-Shoham, a brigade commander, assumed it to be "of at least company strength". Schorr flatly denied Nafshi's claim, and Greengold characterized the assertion as a "blood libel" motivated by "a mixture of jealousy, evil and psychological problems."

Post-war activities Until 2008, he lived in a Galilee hilltop village. He was one of the founders of the vegetarian food company Tivall and the managing director of Frutarom chemical company.

In 2008, he was elected mayor of the Israeli city of Ofakim.