Benjamin Dunkelman, dead at 84, was a Canadian from Toronto, and a son of the founders of the Tip Top Tailors clothing company.

The Canadian Encyclopedia entry on Dunkelman states, “Dunkelman’s mother was a committed Zionist, and at 18 Dunkelman went off to work on a kibbutz in Palestine, at that time still under a British mandate through the League of Nations. He was employed for part of the time as a shomer, or watchman, part of the armed patrols that kept the area free of marauders and thieves. He returned to Toronto in 1932 to assist his father, but went again to Palestine in the late 1930s to develop new settlements with colleagues from America, the UK, and South Africa.”

Dunkelman served with Canada in the Second World War, and then took part in the campaign to establish the State of Israel. The Encyclopedia notes, “In 1947, he journeyed [to Palestine] and took command of a mortar unit in the Mahal, the legion of foreign volunteers – both Jewish and Christian – fighting for the establishment of the nation of Israel against vastly superior forces from six Arab countries. Dunkelman’s skill with the mortar brought him to the attention of the Israeli High Command, and he was instrumental in the breaking of the siege of Jerusalem, a city of critical moral and strategic value to the new nation. He was given control of the Seventh Brigade with which he took the Galilee and the city of Nazareth, one of the region’s most politically valuable centres.”

He then returned to Toronto and continued his role in the family company. An autobiography about Dunkelman published in 1976 was titled Dual Allegiance. He died in 1997.