David Yonah, the son of Eliyahu and Boa-Ron Manta, was born in Tobruk, Libya in 1920. As a young man, during the North African campaign of World War II, he met Jewish soldiers in the British Army from Eretz Yisrael, and these memories remained in his heart. He was a witness to the post-war Arab rioting and massacres of the Jewish communities in November 1945, the worst of such incidents which occurred in North Africa.
When he decided to leave his father’s home for Eretz Yisrael, he walked 600 miles to reach French North Africa and from there he sailed to Marseilles in France. He found out how to volunteer for the Haganah and reached Israel in June 1948.
He joined the Givati Brigade, participating in the battles of Hata, Negba, Abdis and Julis, as well as Kaukaba, and his last battle was at Huleiqat which was captured in fierce hand-to-hand bayonet fighting. With a calm disposition, he was also courageous, stalwart, and the most powerful and healthiest young soldier of his platoon. He considered this war against the Arabs as personal revenge, as a month before he fell he had received the bad news that both his father and sister had been murdered by wild mobs in Tobruk in another massacre.
At this battle of Huleiqat on 19th October 1948, David Yonah was hit by a missile from an anti-tank rifle, and died of his wounds the same day.
The next day he was laid to rest at the Kfar Warburg cemetery.
Source: Translated from the Yizkor website by Joe Woolf