Dov Yermiya was born on moshav Beit Gan, now a part of Yavne'el, in what was then Ottoman Palestine in 1914.

His parents, David and Bella Yirmanovich, had immigrated to Palestine from the Russian Empire as part of the Second Aliyah.

In school, he displayed musical talent, and at age 15, he conducted a student's choir and composed melodies.

[1] After World War II broke out, Yermiya joined the British Army and served in Palestinian Transport Corps.

[4] He was a deputy battalion commander in the Carmeli Brigade during Operation Hiram, which saw Israel capture the Upper Galilee and invade southern Lebanon, which was temporarily occupied by the Israelis.

When Yermiya learned of this, he filed a complaint that led to the two officers' trial and conviction in a military court.

After the war, Yermiya continued to serve in the army, eventually reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

His second wife, Hadassah Mor, whom he married during this time, claimed he had developed Communist views, and wrote that "Stalin... was Dov's God."

After retiring from his military career, Yermiya became a member of kibbutz Sarid, where he worked in agriculture and as a Hebrew teacher for new immigrants.

After his dismissal from the army, Yermiya continued to assist Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as a private citizen.

According to Edward Alexander, in a chapter surveying what he calls 'Antisemitism, Israeli-style,' Yermiya is said to have made a profession of giving speeches around the world that draw on an analogy between Israel and Nazi Germany, and to have affirmed in an interview that he and his friends thought as early as 1945 that the Holocaust would "affect Jews in Israel ... for the bad.

When the First Intifada broke out, he urged Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the Palestinian territories, and was arrested on suspicion of incitement.

[2] In the last years of his life, Yermiya expressed his opinion that Zionism was a failure, and that the State of Israel was ultimately doomed.

In July 2009, he wrote to friends expressing his despair at the situation in Israel and Palestine, and concluding Therefore I, a 95-year-old Sabra, who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel, Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.In a 2011 interview for The Last Zionist, a film about his life, he stated “I’ve lived under three regimes in this country: four years with the Turks, 30 years with the British and now with Israel…I see no future for my offspring in this country.