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the sayeret sometimes felt less like an army unit than a

it was camouflage dress. When we were on the base

somehow empowering and exhilirating. This was all

none of us had talked. We didn’t fool ourselves into

five or six of us were brought back into the large room and told

I was taken from my cell to a primitive toilet and given

I would be yanked to my feet and punched

other interrogators shouted out the same

rank and serial number. After each question

the whole sayeret held a four-day exercise in the Galilee.

the kind of subtlety required to give your captors

were lurid. Partly because we were developing a bit of

we were given a classroom briefing on what to do if we fell into

I have a slight lisp. That made mastering Arabic even harder.

though most of the Sephardi recruits already

we relied on carrier pigeons to keep in touch with the

and he still had almost no use of his right arm. Errol

designed to push us to the very limits of endurance. I

almost always at night the length and breadth

Avraham believed that a background in Arabic culture and