The spring sun burns down on Tel Aviv's bustling streets, flooding Ernesto's pasta joint with light. The homely restaurant, run by an Italian immigrant and his Russian wife, is the neighbourhood hang- out of Itzhak Yaakov, a retired brigadier-general, Israel's former chief scientist and a progenitor of the country's high-technology boom.

The 81-year-old Yaakov's life spans the history of Israel, whose condition is the invariable subject for discussion at his weekly lunches with about half a dozen other former generals who also fought for the country's independence in 1948 and in the wars that followed.