Shmuel "Gorodish" Gonen (Hebrew: שמואל גונן; 14 December 1930 – 30 September 1991) was a Polish-born Israeli general and Chief of the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War.

[1] He served in the Haganah at fourteen, and participated in the battles over Jerusalem in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, being wounded five times.

It was also documented in a popular Israeli book "חשופים בצריח" ("Chasufim Batzariach", "Exposed in the Turret") that he would deliberately cause his men to fail inspections and then punish them for it.

He was overly strict, often meting out severe punishment to soldiers accused of minor offenses such as failure to polish their boots.

[citation needed] In March 1968, Gonen oversaw the armored corps in the Battle of Karameh in Jordan, where Yasser Arafat and the PLO had their base.