robert Ben-Nun Benayoun was born and raised in Morocco in the 1950s and 60s - a Sephardic Jew in an Arab country with a strong French influence. As a teen, he felt a calling to the Jewish homeland and moved on his own to Israel to finish high school. Following mandatory military service in Tsahal, serving during the Yom Kippur War, he discovered a love of the Sinai Peninsula, then under Israeli control.