Richard Hecht (inset) is the public face of the IDF (Picture: Reuters/X)
A Scotsman who moved to Israel 40 years ago is now the international face of the Israel Defence Force.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht is the IDF’s international spokesman. He’s lived in the country since the 1980s, but occasionally raises eyebrows as he still has a thick Glaswegian accent.
He moved to Israel from Newton Mearns, a suburb of Glasgow, along with his family and he has now become one of the most recognisable figures in the IDF, The Scotsman reports.
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Lt-Col Hecht said in an interview with broadcast media this morning that the strikes on Israel by Hamas over the weekend were ‘the worst massacre of Israeli civilians in our history’.
He said: ‘We are still fighting on the ground. There are still communities in Israel where there are terrorists, masked gunmen, fighting in the civilian community…we are still fighting back, basically.
‘This has been the worst massacre of Israeli civilians in our history in such a short period of time.’
He also said Hamas did not go for military targets and ‘went for children, grandmothers’ instead, saying the IDF would respond ‘very very severely’.
Lt-Col Hecht has shared video statements online (Picture: IDF)
Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Saturday, leading to Israeli retaliation (Picture: AP)
Lt-Col Hecht grew up in a traditional kibbutz – where he and his siblings slept in the children’s house, away from their parents. He described the kibbutz as ‘tough – but it made us Israelis’.
He joined the IDF at age 18 after his parents left Scotland, and worked in various foreign relations posts and combat positions before becoming international spokesman in 2022 – a day before Operation Breaking Dawn, a three-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking to Jewish News last year, he explained why they left: ‘Our parents wanted to make a new start, I think they were tired of the diaspora.
‘But it was traumatic: we left a very comfortable lifestyle to live in spartan Israel in the 80s.’
The family moved to Kibbutz El-Rom, but after it was privatised his parents left and moved to Zichron Ya’akov, a small township in the north of Israel.
His mother, Valerie, worked at two wineries while his father Albert was an agricultural writer. They’re now both retired.
He started his army career in a combat unit in the West Bank and the Lebanese border, working his way up to become a battalion commander.
Attendees at a outdoor party near Kibbutz Urim fled after they heard gunshots (Picture: X)
Smoke rises above Gaza City as the IDF returns fire (Picture: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP)
After being offered the opportunity to study at the IDF’s expense, he spent a year on the US company commander’s course in America before studying law and political science at Reichman University in Herzlia.
Thanks to his language skills, Lt-Col Hecht spent considerable time working with the American military on a number of projects, including ballistic missile defence.
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He had lined up a completely different job, at New York’s Jewish Heritage Museum, but a day before moving in March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic struck and the job did not go ahead.
Instead he went into industry, working in business development for an Israeli defence company – but he says he ‘got a bit bored’ and jumped on the opportunity to rejoin the IDF as its spokesman last year.
Lt-Col Hecht now lives in Tel Aviv with his financial planner wife, Zohara, and their two daughters – his eldest was set to join the army last year.
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