Results for “Kirya”

…ded Soviet-made anti-aircraft missile batteries. We might easily get shot down. The mission struck the generals in the kirya as so risky as to border on the insane. But I was confident that we could make it work. I began talking to the few senior air force officers who seemed mo...

…a said. “It’s like 1967 all over again.” “No,” I said. “Worse. Much worse.” A few weeks later, | was coming out of the kirya when I ran into another friend, whom I’d first met at Hebrew University. Like me, he had been a junior officer in 1967. His name was Ron Ben-Ishai. He wou...

… aide, Gidi Grinstein. I also took along a strong security team, including Shlomo Yanai, head of strategic planning the kirya, and Israel Hason, a former deputy-head of Shin Bet. There was another important, if less obvious, inclusion: Dan Meridor. A leading member of the Likud b...

…And if we were going to go ahead with the mission, time was running short. A date for the operation had been set by the kirya: February 1964. I was not alone in believing that, unless we cracked the problem of getting the equipment to the cable site, the operation was impossible....

…f training a small force of Israeli soldiers to go on cross-border intelligence missions. The initial response from the kirya — military headquarters in Tel Aviv — was so frustrating that anyone else would have given up. None of the generals saw any reason to believe his scheme w...

…ondering whether there was any real need to defuse, much less remove, the bugging machinery. But the very fact that the kirya, in the early hours of the war, had still wanted us to try was a reflection of the deep sense of apprehension in Israel in the weeks before the war. Even...

…as to receive the intercept transmissions if we succeeded. Not since the first Golan operation had the attention of the kirya been so keen, or the stakes so high. In addition to Meir Amit, and of course Avraham, also flying down to Mount Keren would be General Tzur’s successor as...

…ondering whether there was any real need to defuse, much less remove, the bugging machinery. But the very fact that the kirya, in the early hours of the war, had still wanted us to try was a reflection of the deep sense of apprehension in Israel in the weeks before the war. Even...

… a Hizbollah attack in the security zone, accusations of weakness from right-wing politicians, or simple caution in the kirya. The only way to get it done was to decide, and to do it. My self-imposed deadline for the pullout was now just eight weeks away. Hizbollah had already b...

…ny others. I learned later that my parents had been making daily calls to Digli, who was working in intelligence in the kirya. Though he had no way of knowing where I was, he kept assuring them that he had checked with my commanders and that I was alive and well. Nava had been re...

…der — I felt I could be open with him. Not only did I know him from Sayeret Matkal, which came under his purview in the kirya. He was a scientist manqué and was eager, as soon as I arrived in his office, to hear about my physics studies. When I did manage to turn the conversation...

… of the war, we heard Israeli 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...

…a said. “It’s like 1967 all over again.” “No,” I said. “Worse. Much worse.” A few weeks later, | was coming out of the kirya when I ran into another friend, whom I’d first met at Hebrew University. Like me, he had been a junior officer in 1967. His name was Ron Ben-Ishai. He wou...

…mind. In my weakened state, I had no chance. Skeptical though I was about the job, it opened up a new world to me. The kirya itself was not new territory. But now, I became exposed to how how the huge range of intelligence information we gathered was collated, evaluated, assesse...

…on, force balance and funding for the Israeli military. A few weeks later, Arik offered me a promotion: a return to the kirya, as a two- star general, to become head of planning for the armed forces. I don’t know why he chose me: the Sinai exercise perhaps, the fact he knew I'd...