Well, first there was Abraham. He founded the Hebrew people. After him, came his younger son Issac. Issac had twin sons Esau and Jacob. Jacob inherited the mantel of leading the Hebrews. God renamed him Israel which means "one who struggles with God".
Jacob had 12 sons who founded the 12 tribes of Israel. His Son, Joseph became the trusted adviser to the Egyptian Pharaoh and brought the Hebrews to Egypt to live. After generations, a new dynasty came to power and they enslaved the Hebrews. Moses did his thing and they left Egypt.
Joshua was the first great military commander. He was Moses's second in command and leader of the Hebrew military forces. His title Aloof is still used my modern Israeli forces as the word for general.
There was Gideon who is said to have created the first recorded commando force.
There was also the great commander Barak who defeated the Philistines.
Eventually, Israel was united under its first King, Saul. He and his son, Prince Jonathan, were great warrior commanders. Johnathan was David's best friend. David became one of Saul's commanders and eventually married his daughter. After Saul and Johnathan were killed in battle, David became king.
David was followed by Solomon. After Solomon, the kingdom began to fall apart. It was conquered and reconquered by many foreign empires.
One conqueror was Alexander The Great. When Alexander died, the land of Israel passed to on of the successor kingdoms under Antiochus IV Epiphanes. They tried to force the Hebrews to become pagans.
The last great Israelite leader of classical times Judah Maccabee who led the fight for independence, won, and founded the Hasmonean royal dynasty and established Jewish independence in the Land of Israel for about one hundred years, from 164 BC to 63 BC.
At that point, Israel was came to dominated by the Romans under Pompey the Great.
The next great Israeli commander wouldn't be until 1947-8. American colonel Micky Marcus, a Jew and former officer under Patton, became the first Aloof of modern Israel. He trained and organized the amateur army to help it win and keep control over half of Jerusalem in the face of five huge Arab armies. Unfortunately, like Stone Wall Jackson, he was accidentally shot by his own men. He is the only American buried at West Point to die in the service of a foreign army.
