Results for “Avraham Ramon”

/ BARAK / 17 the deal was due to begin in early November, but he kept putting off a vote in the cabinet. When the vote came, on November 11, Bibi squeaked through by a margin of 8 to 4, but with five abstentions. That meant less than half of his ministers had voted for it. The...

/ BARAK / 42 negotiations. The first stirrings of discontent had begun even before I went to see Clinton. On the basis of my commitment merely to try for peace, Arik Sharon had presented a no-confidence motion in the Knesset. It was never going to pass. But only days after I’d m...

heart of Tel Aviv. He was worried that not enough people would show up, and that those who did would be from the left: Meretz, not Labor, people who would be there mainly to criticize him for not going far, or quickly, enough in pulling out of the West Bank. In the end, he was p...

/ BARAK / 113 ill-fated Israeli war in Lebanon since 1982, was the reason I ultimately found myself back in the Israeli government. It began on July 12, 2006, when Hizbollah fired rockets from southern Lebanon as cover for an ambush of two Israeli Humvees on our side of the bor...

…tional military cemetery on Mount Herzl, we stood before the resting place of Nechemia Cohen, Yoni Netanyahu, Dado, and Avraham Arnan. From there, we went to the Prime Minister’s office. With Dan Shomron and his wife looking on, Shamir presented me with my third star and formally...

…cessor, Giora Zorea, turned out to be more elaborate than my arrival, though not at my instigation. With both Talik and Avraham in attendance, Dado presented me with my fifth tza/ash. It was not for Beirut. Not for the operation against the Syrian officers, or the unprecedented a...

…gh Meir Amit was pressing the rest of the military brass for a final go-ahead, it still hadn’t arrived by early August. Avraham decided he needed a fall-back plan. He called Tubul and me into his office. He said he wanted me to join the team’s training as Tubul’s deputy, and to b...

…a newcomer. But he was smart, steady and he had served in the Golani Brigade, so he knew the terrain along the border. Avraham could not hide his own nervousness as the operation drew nearer. A week before we were due to set off, he asked whether we were planning a further, full...

…the exhausted crews were already asleep. I parked our Jeep a few yards off the road. We organized a series of watches: Avraham, then Rafi and Danny, with me taking the pre-dawn stretch. A few hours later, Rafi nudged me awake. “I heard something,” he said, pointing west toward t...

…the exhausted crews were already asleep. I parked our Jeep a few yards off the road. We organized a series of watches: Avraham, then Rafi and Danny, with me taking the pre-dawn stretch. A few hours later, Rafi nudged me awake. “I heard something,” he said, pointing west toward t...

…h in broad daylight what I’d failed to do in the desert darkness four months earlier. But it was no use. I finally told Avraham we’d be better off just blowing it up. I attached an explosive charge and set a two-minute delay. We watched from a couple of hundred yards away as the...

…n 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 armed forces chief of staff —a gruff Palmach veteran whom I’d met very briefly at...

…h in broad daylight what I’d failed to do in the desert darkness four months earlier. But it was no use. I finally told Avraham we’d be better off just blowing it up. I attached an explosive charge and set a two-minute delay. We watched from a couple of hundred yards away as the...

…ltration force. At this point, we were still just an intelligence unit, not an elite commando force like Britain’s SAS, Avraham Aranan’s ultimate vision for the sayeret. The aim of our bugging missions into Syria and Egypt was not to fight. It was to get in and get out, unseen an...

…e described to me the atmosphere when I radioed my “milk is coming” message: solemn faces, hushed conversations between Avraham and Meir Amit. And off to the side, the recently elevated chief-of-staff, Rabin, chain-smoking and biting his nails. Finally, the audible sighs of relie...