Gilad was born in 1912 in Bender, Bessarabia (then part of the Russian Empire and now in Moldova), and his family (Bessarabian Jews) fled to Odessa during World War I.

He was active in getting young members of the cooperative agricultural communities of the Jezreel Valley to participate in HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed youth movement activities.

In November 1937, he was sent to Poland to work with the pioneering movement Hehalutz, returning home in 1939.

[2] Between 1950 and 1953, he worked on the Palmach Book, an anthology he edited with Matti Megged.

Individual poems he wrote have been published in Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish.