We were married there, in the spring of 1969. My parents and brothers came with two busloads of friends from the kibbutz. Avraham Arnan was there, of course. But Ahraleh Yariv and Eli Zeira, two of the military intelligence heroes of the Six-Day War, also drove up for the wedding...
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Chapter Thirteen It was a huge responsibility, and not just because I was suddenly in charge of an intelligence apparatus ranging from Unit 8200, our sophisticated signals collection and decryption unit, to the operational units like Sayeret Matkal. It was what was at stake if t...
I could see why Dan had said it. Working with Mookie and the rest of my team, I’d been in charge of all the initial planning. I was in command of the Sabena assault, the only remotely similar operation Israel had attempted. Though an attempt to rescue dozens of terrified hostages...
asked what he knew about the car outside. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s not mine.” They took it away. As insistently as I, and others in Sayeret Matkal, had wanted to play our part on the battlefields of the Six-Day War — in the Sinai, on the Golan, in the bitter battle to capture J...
Ashkenazim — and their prominence and privilege had stoked increasing resentment among Israel’s disadvantaged Sephardi majority, with their roots in the Arab world and especially north Africa. Begin not only sensed this. While he’d never lost the formal bearing — or the accent —...
the start. A number of others managed to escape when the bus was stopped. But several dozen remained inside. I was in Europe at the time, on one of my periodic trips to discuss Middle East issues with a fellow intelligence chief. Yet an aide called me with the news. I was severa...
Chapter Twelve My own part in the Lebanon war would change dramatically as a result of that last military exercise in the Sinai. Arik Sharon was now Minister of Defense, and he came for the final afternoon. From his experience as a frontline commander — in 1956, 1967 and 1973 —...
Though no one claimed responsibility, there was no shortage of suspects. During and since the civil war, Gemayel had at various times been at odds with a whole array of enemies or rivals: Muslim militias, the PLO, other Maronite factions and, of course, the Syrians. But I think f...
Rabin’s closest aide, whom I knew well, was aware that Unit 8200 had intercepts that laid bare the details, and left no doubt the murderers were from a PLO group. He called and asked me to appear on a weekly television interview program called Moked. It was hosted by Nissim Misha...
the substance of any real peace — could not simply be put off forever. Untangling them was getting harder, not easier. And we realised that only in an environment like Camp David — a “pressure cooker” was how I described it to Clinton, and to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albri...
Middle East Affairs, and four years later the United Nations envoy, Count Folke Bernadotte. “Why are you so strident,” Shamir asked me, only half-jokingly, after ’'d insisted on joining a government discussion and pressing several intelligence matters. “It’s because I’ve read th...
Chapter Eight It was the same jumble of buildings 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 be...
response, or an American one, on an incomparably greater scale. It would also totally isolate Saddam internationally and end any chance of peeling off Arab support for the Americans. It was my nearly 100-per-cent caveat that prompted a tense debate within the cabinet. Even if th...
each, they’d put the name of the military unit to be called up in an emergency. We'd been allocated Lod Airport, because our base was just 15 minutes away. Still, as I accompanied the engineer back to the control tower, I tried to work out in my mind whether we could plan, prepar...
But at least my next posting was closer to home. It was only 20 minutes from our apartment, on a former RAF base not far from Lod airport. On the First of April 1971, I was promoted from major to lieutenant-colonel, and given the assignment which, more than any other, I’d hoped f...