Results for “Sayeret Golani”

…t in uniform. As a teenager, small and slight and not even shaving yet, I was one of the founding core of a unit called Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s equivalent of America’s Delta Force, or Britain’s SAS. It may be that the way I thought and acted, the way I dealt with danger or with...

… lunch, he asked me: “How’s fironut?” “Tough,” I said. “Boring.” Smiling, he said: “How would you feel about joining a sayeret?” The question took me by surprise. In Hebrew, sayeret meant “reconnaissance unit”. It was the name given to special units that carried out missions be...

…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...

…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...

…d hostages in Entebbe, with both the terrorists and possibly Ugandan soldiers armed and ready, would be much harder. As Sayeret Matkal commander, I’d conceived and commanded other missions that requiring us to break new ground. But — and it was a huge but — I knew from the moment...

…ther side. To the extent that my part in war was different from other junior officers, it was because of my history in Sayeret Matkal. Other Israeli sayerets were attached to specific fighting forces. Sayeret Golan, for instance, was part of the Golani infantry brigade in the no...

… we’d found a way to make the operation work. The Sinai mission marked a transition not just for me, but for others in Sayeret Matkal as well. Avraham Aranan finally left the unit he’d imagined, created and built. He became the head of the technology unit in military intelligenc...

information. But in talking with his wartime friends, he realized this kind of low-level intelligence could never address the real need for Israel: to ensure we had early warning if Syria or Lebanon, Jordan or Egypt, were preparing to go to war against us. He began toying with t...

information. But in talking with his wartime friends, he realized this kind of low-level intelligence could never address the real need for Israel: to ensure we had early warning if Syria or Lebanon, Jordan or Egypt, were preparing to go to war against us. He began toying with t...

…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...

… brought back Moshe Dayan, now a member of the Knesset, as Defense Minister. I still vividly remember a visitor to the sayeret the day after Eshkol’s address. Colonel Eli Zeira was head of the “collection department” of the intelligence corps, the rough equivalent of America’s N...

… called me with the news. I was several thousand miles away from what happening. But I knew there was every possibility Sayeret Matkal might be called in, and my instincts told me we should proceed with caution. The situation we were facing felt nothing like Sabena, much less Ent...

steady and he had served in the Golani Brigade

…whom Id be crossing into Syria in less than 10 hours’ time, and our hillutz, or back-up. A hillutz was always a part of sayeret operations. The back-up group would stay on the Israeli side of the border. If we got into trouble, they’d come in after us. Even after my briefing for...

…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...