When asked why he adopted the Hebrew last name Neta, Colonel (Res.) Zvi Neta explains that his father’s last name was Boxenbaum, which means a boxwood tree in German. His mother’s maiden name was Tannenbaum, which is the German word for fir tree. “They were both trees,” he explains, “so I chose the Hebrew word ‘neta,’ which means sapling.” At the age of seventy-four, Neta has grown far beyond a sapling, branching into many fields and bearing abundant fruit in each.
Neta is a man of many parts: former IDF intelligence officer, industrialist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and most recently, author. Together, these characteristics have served him well in his seventy-four years, enabling him to make significant contributions to Israeli society in multiple areas.
Born in 1952 in Herzliya Pituah, Neta was the only child of Joseph and Penina Boxenbaum. His father’s story was a classic one: a traditional Polish family that immigrated to the United States in 1919. From an early age, his father rebelled against life in the Diaspora, learned Hebrew, and became active in the socialist Zionist movement. Zvi’s mother was born in Canada, and she and his father met by chance at the offices of the Habonim organization in New York.
When World War II broke out, his father volunteered for the US Army and served as an officer specializing in transporting military equipment by ship to Europe. After the war, while searching for a cousin who had survived Auschwitz, he witnessed the desperate plight of Europe’s Jews. He then joined the Haganah and became involved in smuggling Jewish refugees and weapons into Palestine.
Neta grew up speaking English at home and speaks Hebrew, English, and French fluently. He served in the IDF Intelligence Corps for 47 years, most of them in the Southern Command. A year and a half before the Yom Kippur War, he was assigned to the planning section of Southern Command Intelligence, where he also served during the war. He witnessed firsthand everything that unfolded before and during the war, and experienced the frustration caused by the catastrophic intelligence failure that cost so many lives. During his military career, he established new systems in divisional intelligence and in Southern Command Intelligence, particularly the targets center.
In 2023, several months before October 7, Neta’s book, “Warning Signs: The Southern Command Intelligence Failure in the Yom Kippur War,” was published. In 1973, he was a deputy to Lieutenant Binyamin Siman-Tov— whose warnings of the impending war were disregarded.
In the book, Neta describes the succession of intelligence warnings that went unheeded, the intelligence sources, the blindness that afflicted the senior command, and the flawed intelligence methodology. In the book’s introduction, he wrote, “Military intelligence is not an exact science. It has always been—and remains—dependent on people: on human judgment, human psychology, and the human capacity for analysis. Can history repeat itself?” Unfortunately, he acknowledges, history did repeat itself on October 7, far beyond what he expected.
Neta’s father was one of Israel’s first industrialists. He founded Automotive Equipment Group in 1949, which imports many leading car brands to Israel, and Automotive Industries Ltd (AIL) in the 1960s, which was the leading automotive assembly plant in Israel for fifty years. Neta became the head of the company in 1980 and in 1985, led its efforts to become the distributor of Suzuki and Bridgestone products in Israel. This was a major accomplishment at the time, during the Arab League boycott, which had prevented Japanese products from being sold in Israel. The company also began importing Kawasaki mechanical equipment from Japan, and introduced Jaguar and Porsche to the Israeli market.
Zvi expanded Automotive Equipment Group into other areas, including car leasing, insurance, car fleet management, and more.
In 1971, his father established the Boxenbaum-Neta Foundation, an Israeli philanthropic fund. The foundation focuses on social involvement, healthcare, education, culture, and the arts, and over the years, Neta has continued its important work. “My father said that if you support healthcare, you are not only helping Israelis, but helping all mankind,” he shares. The foundation supports many of Israel’s leading hospitals and health organizations, including Sheba Medical Center, Beilinson Hospital, Shamir Medical Center, Yoseftal Medical Center in Eilat, HaEmek Medical Center in Afula, and Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa.
The Boxenbaum-Neta Foundation helped found Bet Issie Shapiro, which assists people with disabilities; Alut — the Israeli Society for Children and Adults with Autism; Natal — the Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center; and the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind. Neta himself is a board member of the Israeli Cancer Association, and was seriously ill with an aggressive form of leukemia several years ago and recovered. He says, “One of my dreams is to raise the money for the technology that will eliminate cancer.”
Neta has utilized his entrepreneurial skills to invest in leading Israeli technology companies, including Mobileye, Reshef Technologies, NoTraffic, and many others. “I’m very proud that I helped enable many businesses to start and succeed,” he adds. He has also been active in the construction and building industry, and designed several buildings, including Beit Neta and Suzuki Tower in Tel Aviv, among others.
He explains his three business philosophies. “First, a company is no better than the people in the company. Second, if I’m involved in a business or a company, it’s very important to me that its employees working enjoy working there. Third, a company must grow. If not, it will die. “
Quoting the late mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, Neta says, “You’re only worth what you can create.” By that measure, his contribution to Israeli society has been invaluable.
Written in collaboration with Automotive Equipment Group