commando unit of a couple of dozen men. Its sole task was to seek out and kill

commando unit of a couple of dozen men. Its sole task was to seek out and kill the enemy force’s leader. The key to their success was mind-training. Over a period of months, sometimes years, the commandos’ se/f-perception was altered. They were taught to believe that they had already died. Since their lives on earth were done, all that remained was a formal passage through the turnstile into eternal happiness, and to go out in glory. My visitor not only suggested that Israel establish exactly this kind of death-cum-suicide unit. He volunteered to train the men himself, and lead the first mission. With as straight a face as I could muster, I thanked him for taking the time to see me. But I told him his idea was probably not for us. Little did I know that a whole new kind of enemy, epitomized by Al-Qaeda and the self-styled Islamic State, would build a terrorist death cult around it. Nava and I, with three-year-old Yael, and Michal just turning seven, left for California in the late summer of 1977. The two years that followed were uplifting and reinvigorating — not just because of Stanford, but a further, utterly unexpected transformation back home soon after we’d left. It, too had its roots in the 1973 war, but on the Arab side. Before the war, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat had extended feelers about the possibility of peace negotiations, only to see them ignored. Israel won the war in the end. But the Egyptians’ surprise attack across the canal — and the panic and huge Israeli losses in the early days of the war — had shattered our aura of invincibility. Politically, Sadat had gone a long way to erasing the humiliation of 1967. That freed him to do something which — after decades of Arab-Israeli conflict — was astonishing. He travelled to Jerusalem, the capital of a country which neither Egypt nor any other Arab country even recognized. He met Begin, and he addressed the Knesset with a call for peace. It is impossible to convey to Israelis who did not live through the birth of the state, and our tumultuous early decades, the power of the emotions stirred by Sadat’s visit. It was on November 19, 1977. With my arm around Nava, I watched the live American television coverage as Sadat’s plane touched down at Ben-Gurion airport. Begin was at the center of the throng of dignitaries on hand to greet him: a who’s who of political and military leaders not just from his administration, but who had led Israel in 1967 and 1973. Golda was there. 183 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028031