was always the principle of targeted force, the idea that we would take out

was always the principle of targeted force, the idea that we would take out targets, or defeat enemies, out of military necessity. But even on the first day of the war, it was clear that it would be by far the most consequential conflict in our country’s history. There was no mission for Sayeret Matkal, nor, it seemed, any prospect of our playing any significant part. The fact that my own role was slightly less peripheral was due to Avraham Arnan. He phoned me almost as soon as we’d got news of the Israeli air victory, and told me he had been told to take a few men from the sayeret across the southern border. Our assignment was to complete our failed attempt to defuse the booby-trap on the intercept in the Sinai. I quickly drafted in two others from the unit. One was Danny Michaelson, a friend from Hebrew University, where we had been lab partners. The other was Rafi Friedman, our paramedic, who had been with me on several of our missions on the Golan. Avraham arrived at the base around noon. I got a Jeep and we set off. We crossed into Egypt around four o’clock in the afternoon and headed for the field headquarters of Israel Tal. Known as Talik, he was the commander of Israel’s armored corps, and Avraham knew him well. His wartime division consisted of the country’s premier tank unit, the Seventh Armored Brigade, and a reserve brigade. We accompanied them the next day to an abandoned Egyptian camp not far from El Arish, in the northern Sinai. At least, we’d assumed it was abandoned. As Talik and Avraham were talking in his command post, we heard a sudden burst of gunfire, which seemed to come from just a few dozen yards outside. As everyone inside the command post looked around, Avraham turned to me and said: “Ehud, don’t you think we ought to deal with it?” Then, to Talik: “Make sure none of your guys shoots him.” I got Danny and Rafi. We made our way toward an underground bunker, which seemed the most likely source of the gunfire. Hugging the wall as I led the way down a series of concrete steps, I clicked off the safety on my Uzi just in case. But with the main Egyptian forces in obvious retreat, I figured that whoever was doing the shooting would have to be shellshocked, or insanely brave, to put up a fight. There were eight men crouched inside, soldiers and several staff officers cradling Kalashnikovs, and an Egyptian army general. In what was obviously at least serviceable Arabic, I told them all to raise their hands. I made a brief attempt to interrogate the general, but quickly reached the limits of my linguistic proficiency. So we marched them away and handed them over to Talik’s intelligence officers. 89 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011560