Where Beirut appears
33 total
had been in the US for barely six weeks. It was the Sixth of October 1973: Yom Kippur, the holiest date on the Jewish calendar. I was still a bit groggy from the night before. We had been out at a get-to-know-you event for some of the sever...
parts of my mind, by doing postgraduate work at a normal American university. Dado agreed. I still had to get accepted. The first step was to take the post-graduate entry exam, the GRE. There were two parts to it. The first involved mathema...
… smiled. She didn’t need to ask where I’d been. Israel radio had been full of news about a major operation in Beirut. 143 * * * A few weeks later, my term as commander ended. The handover to my successor, Giora Zorea, turned out to be more...
er had we joined the Corniche than I saw another police Land Rover about 200 yards ahead of us. This one had a spotlight on the roof, panning both sides of the road. I told the driver to slow down. About 100 yards or so later, reaching the...
…nearby flat, killing an elderly Italian woman. She had been one of the Mossad’s sources of information on the Beirut apartments. Mookie’s team came down first. They joined us, crouching behind the columns, as sporadic shots continued from o...
…nearby flat, killing an elderly Italian woman. She had been one of the Mossad’s sources of information on the Beirut apartments. Mookie’s team came down first. They joined us,
been told by the Mossad to look out for a grey Mercedes, but it wasn’t there. The next stage was for each team leader to press the transmit button three times on his radio. When I’d heard from all of them, I would send a signal back. Then,...
re replying. “I’ve never been in a place where there’s live fire,” he said. I told him not to worry. He still wouldn’t be. “You’re going to be parked around the corner, until it’s over. Then, it’s just about getting home.” When we reached t...
…ne required direct co-ordination with us. This was an attack on a DFLP building a mile or so away in southern Beirut, led by Amnon Lipkin, the friend whose unit had faced one of the toughest battles at Karameh. Amnon’s paratroop force would...
…d, there would be successes elsewhere to provide a credible justification for having sent Israeli forces into Beirut. As we received further intelligence, new obstacles had to be factored in. The main one was the presence of a gendarmerie,...
toward the image of Beirut, Dado turned to me. “Do you know this place?” he asked. Yes, I said. I’d seen the photo. Nodding toward the Mossad men, I said: “These two officers showed it to me.” “Do you have an idea how to do this operation?”...
…nfantry and paratroopers. Beside him were the two Mossad officers with whom I’d had most of my dealings about Beirut. They were all staring at an aerial photo of the Lebanese capital, with an area marked in blue pen around a street called R...
…-and-take of Lebanese politics. Life goes on in the freewheeling way that has long drawn repressed, frustrated Arabs to Beirut. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030050
