Results for “Sayeret Tzanhanim”

Chapter Five Almost no one in Israel knew what we had done. But the next morning, a package arrived at the Sayeret Matkal base from one of the few people who did. We opened it in Avraham’s office. It was a nearly full carton of champagne: real, French champagne, since it would b...

…the old Savoy Hotel. They shot and killed three people in the lobby and took the rest of the staff and guests hostage. Sayeret Matkal was called in. As the unit went through final preparations for their assault, Uzi showed up. He had a rifle. He was in his everyday officer’s uni...

… Ahraleh’s and Eli Zeira’s gesture. I always said yes. It was only weeks after our wedding that I formally returned to Sayeret Matkal. Both Nava and I were aware of the additional pressures my military commitments might place on our family life. But she understood why I’d chosen...

…s pipe, reading, and smiling. But outside this domestic haven, he still struggled. He had looked forward to commanding Sayeret Matkal. But there was a growing distance between him and those he led, a kind of dissonance between these more typically Israeli youngsters and the aloo...

…m Arnan, a couple of other officers and a secretary, a kitchenette and a room for storing weapons. This was the home of Sayeret Matkal, although the first thing I was told was that no one, outside a handful of senior officers in military headquarters, knew we existed. The heart...

…iew of how the operation would unfold. But just as he was getting to the detail of the motorcade attack, I felt a young sayeret officer tap me on the shoulder. Kuti had phoned to say I was to go see him at the kirya. “He said immediately,” the officer added, “and not to discuss i...

…i ground forces were consolidating their hold there as well. After dropping Avraham at the kirya, we drove back to the sayeret base, but it was nearly empty. The main fighting was now with Syrian armored units on the Golan Heights, and most of the men in the unit had gone north...

…faced one of the most painful periods during my entire time as chief of staff. It began with the gruesome death of five Sayeret Matkal soldiers during a training exercise in the Negev desert. I’d made preventing such accidents a top priority. By the end of the 1980s, they were cl...

…dings in the same corner of the base where I’d reported a decade earlier, as a 19-year-old fresh from fironut, when the sayeret was still a gleam in Avraham Arman’s eye. Now, I was about to become the first of his successors to have been chosen from within the unit itself. As I c...

…tance of getting early warning of an enemy attack. But they decided the price of possible failure was simply too high. Sayeret Matkal was born three years later. Avraham was still part of the unit running low-level agents in Syria and Lebanon, but his commander reluctantly agree...

… to maturity. When I replied, I am sure everyone knew I was speaking from the heart in saying that my every moment with Sayeret Matkal had been a privilege. And that this latest commendation was an award for the achievements the whole sayeret. Dado did me another good turn. As m...

…t rhapsodic description of the capabilities of our C-130 Hercules transport planes convinced us we could parachute in a Sayeret Matkal team, as well as vehicles for them to use on the ground. Mookie and I agreed that to ensure surprise, we would disguise the commandos as Ugandan...

…tance of getting early warning of an enemy attack. But they decided the price of possible failure was simply too high. Sayeret Matkal was born three years later. Avraham was still part of the unit running low-level agents in Syria and Lebanon, but his commander reluctantly agree...

…sing the Banias River toward the Syrian base. We had nearly three weeks for our final preparations. After two years of sayeret training, I was confident that, physically, we would be up to the task. But even without the obvious jitters emanating from the kirva, I could not help...

…e Defense Minister, Shimon Peres. I assembled a team the same way we’d prepared for special-operations missions in the sayeret: looking for information, intelligence and above all experience and insight from whoever I thought was likely to make that always- narrow difference bet...