Results for “Sayeret Matkal”

…ssemble alongside Ramon’s main team. Rather than ignore Bibi, I was going to use my position as his former commander in Sayeret Matkal, someone who knew him well, to explain why Peres should lead Israel. “How many of us can really understand what it means to be a Prime Minister?...

…fence Minister. I remained in that role for six years: mostly in the current, right-wing Likud government of my onetime Sayeret Matkal charge, Bibi Netanyahu. Much of what I say in this book about war and peace, security and Israel’s future challenges, will make uncomfortable re...

…iran, Israel’s trading gateway to the Red Sea and the source of virtually all our oil imports. I was told to report to Sayeret Matkal the following day, as part of the first group of reservists called up. When I reached the base, Uzi Yairi, who was now in charge of the unit, org...

…omplex organizations” at Stanford, or maybe just the fact our paths had first crossed two decades earlier when I was in Sayeret Matkal. But even though it meant leaving my division command, especially tough since the final Sinai withdrawal was approaching, it was an offer I never...

…ence. “You need to send us,” I said. I tried to persuade him that if it came down to an operation to free our hostages, Sayeret Matkal offered the best hope that it would not end in a bloodbath. We had the mind-set, the background, the training and now the experience. I also knew...

… — Israeli forces on the Golan, at enormous cost, had managed to turn back the Syrian attack. In this war, the men from Sayeret Matkal were not bystanders. Most of the unit joined the fightback in the north, where, under Yoni Netanyahu’s command, they took on and defeated a Syria...

…concern was the possibility of violence. Even before returning home, I’d phoned Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dichter, the former Sayeret Matkal officer who was now head of the Shin Bet. “Let’s hope the violence doesn’t come,” I told them. “But if it does, make sure we are ready.” Though t...

…an. There was still a core of ministers opposed: chiefly Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, but also Boogie Ya’alon, a former Sayeret Matkal commander and chief of staff who Minister of Strategic Affairs. But the confidence and detail with which the plan was laid out, and the fact that...

…ence. “You need to send us,” I said. I tried to persuade him that if it came down to an operation to free our hostages, Sayeret Matkal offered the best hope that it would not end in a bloodbath. We had the mind-set, the background, the training and now the experience. I also knew...

…hether it would be operationally possible to dismantle Tel Rumeida and remove the settlers. I said yes, by sending in a Sayeret Matkal force after midnight, as long as news of the operation did not leak ahead of time. “We'll take over the area, close it off and get control.” Give...

…ion had been ordered to take control over the hills south of the Tovlano Triangle. One of its brigades, led by a former Sayeret Matkal soldier named Nachman Rifkind, was sent to take up a position immediately south of the triangle. Soon after nightfall, Rifkind radioed in that he...

…orthern command. They had set up a rooftop observation post just a few hundred yards in from where I had landed with my Sayeret Matkal team a decade earlier for the Rue Verdun operation. It overlooked a pair of Palestinian refugee camps: Sabra and, a couple of hundred yards close...

…hnology, invention and engineering. In a sense, this was the macroscopic equivalent of one of the guiding principles of Sayeret Matkal: brains, not just brawn. While cost-saving wasn’t the catalyst, I did realize that a change in strategy would mean a change in how we allocated...

…all of the C-130s were already airborne, it was only then that he gave the mission the final go-ahead. As commander of Sayeret Matkal, Pd always found running an operation from a command post hugely frustrating. This was even worse. Once we got word the Israeli force was on the...

…as being given the opportunity to apply everything I’d experienced and learned in the army, from the day I first joined Sayeret Matkal as an 18-year-old, to improve the security and safeguard the future of Israel. I know that sounds corny. But, while the momentum toward war in Ir...