Oved Natan, bodyguard to Yitzhak Rabin and Golda Meir, dies at 72
A former member of Military Intelligence, Natan guarded Rabin in his first term as leader, and Meir during the Yom Kippur War.
Oved Natan, bodyguard to Israeli prime ministers and presidents who witnessed firsthand some of the key events in Israel's history, passed away Monday at the age of 72.
Natan had been hospitalized at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, where he died, after suffering from heart problems. The funeral was to take place at 4pm Tuesday, at Kibbutz Tel Yosef in the Jezreel Valley.
Natan served as bodyguard for prime ministers Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and Levi Eshkol. Israel Shay, the former head of the personal protection unit, served with Nathan from 1970 until he retired from the service.
"He was one of the more prominent people in the service, and not because of his physical size," says Shay. "You don’t have to be large to be a good guard, but he was one of the best."
Natan was born in Jerusalem and spent his youth at Kibbutz Tel Yosef, a period that he called the happiest of his life. In the mid-1960s, he was recruited by Military Intelligence and later drafted into the personal protection unit.
He started work at the beginning of 1969 and on his first day on duty escorted then-prime minister Levi Eshkol to his car after he suffered a heart attack in his office.
A few weeks later, when Eshkol had passed away and the name of Golda Meir was raised as a candidate for prime minister, Natan was sent to her home and became her head of security. He stood beside Meir for four years, including during the worst days of the Yom Kippur War, until her retirement. Natan then worked as bodyguard for Yitzhak Rabin in his first term as prime minister.
One memorable incident in Natan's career was when then-finance minister Pinhas Sapir accompanied Rabin to a Torah inauguration ceremony in the Negev in 1975. Sapphire danced with the Torah scroll and then immediately collapsed. Nathan performed CPR, but to no avail.
The first of his name
Noam Nathan, the son of the legendary guard, said Monday that his father had devoted his life to security. Oved had a great sense of humor and was the salt of the earth, his son said.
Noam said that as a child he remembered the leaders for whom his father provided security. "Rabin attended my brit and Golda visited our home in Jerusalem," he said. "It was a time when the security detail for the prime minister comprised two or three people, who were responsible for everything."
"The relationship (between guard and client) was far more profound. It was a period when there was pride in being an Israeli abroad and he remembered this period fondly. In recent years, it pained him personally to see how things have changed in the country. To him, Rabin's murder was an indelible stain."
One example of the intimacy between Natan and those he protected came from Oved himself. He said that on Mondays, the day of the week that Golda Meir regularly took as a day off, she would undo the tight bun in her hair and fashion it into a style that reached right down her back.
Natan's many trips with prime ministers were the source of numerous anecdotes for his family and his unit. One famous story is of an encounter at a royal guest house near London, to which he had accompanied Rabin. At the end of a long day, he sat down on a chair, only to be quickly reprimanded by the housekeeper with the rank of colonel, for sitting on a chair of King Edward III.
“He told them, 'I am Oved the First, and when Edward the Third returns, I’ll get up,'” Shay said.
