All pilots know the blackout phenomenon, when the g-load of turning acceleration forces the body’s blood down to the legs, leaving the head with diminished blood pressure. The first thing that happens is that vision becomes blurred, then totally lost, and the pilot becomes temporarily blind. Sometimes it can result in fainting. This is a similar phenomenon to what we experience when we get up too quickly after a long period of lying in bed. We sometimes black out. Recovering takes time—long seconds. Blacking out in flight can be real trouble. Fainting can be fatal.
“So when my vision came back,” I told them, “I found myself diving in a wholly different direction and not at the reactor’s yard. The reactor itself was way outside my line of approach, and I couldn’t get my bombsight on it. I thought about circling back and making a second pass, but I couldn’t forget we had orders. Ivry had absolutely forbidden us—the trailing section—to make a second approach. ‘One pass and out of there’ had been his order. Ivry hadn’t wanted a lone aircraft straggling ten or twenty kilometers behind the main force, getting everyone into trouble.”
Ivry nodded sternly.
“And I understood that. And also I wasn’t a wild kid anymore. I was a high-ranking officer and was supposed to set an example. There was no way out. I saw my target was out of reach, so I dropped my bombs on what I could in that Tammuz yard.”
I heard Nahumi gasp, and then he said, “Iftach, you have no idea the weight you took off my heart right now.”
All those years, as I hid my secret, Lieutenant Colonel Nahumi had been hiding his own secret. Nahumi, the commander of the second F-16 squadron, had led the second section of the attackers. I was his wingman. It came out now that he had blamed himself for my miss—he thought that the way he pulled up had interfered with my approach, and this was why I had missed the reactor. I hadn’t told the truth, and for twenty long years he kept his guilt inside.
Zeevik Raz said, “I’ll never forget Iftach’s face after we landed. I thought, Why is he so sad? The mission is done, and we are all back safely. What is that?”
And truly, I was very sad. And since then, whenever asked about this mission, I would answer, “Let me tell you about some other good misses. I have quite a few.” But in my heart I knew that missing the target was not my problem. The real stone that lay on my heart was not the missing, but the silence.
“I WAS SO HUMILIATED and ashamed,” I told them. “How could I miss such a big target, as big as Madison Square Garden? And so important?” For some inner reason the fact that my body had failed me was the worst part. I was a forty-one-year-old male. A psychologist might make a big deal about what had bothered me so much, but I just couldn’t share the fact that my body had betrayed me with anybody else.
“I buried this story, and you, my friends, are the first to hear it.”
Looking at Ali, who sat at the back of the room, I concluded my confession. “To this day, I hadn’t even told Ali, the same way I just kept her in the dark about the whole Baghdad mission. She never knew before the flight that we were going on that flight and that I was going there, too.” I looked at her. She looked up and sent me a quiet smile.
A GOOD WORD CAME FROM Duby. He, who had fought with me in the Yom Kippur War, on whom I inflicted many punishments when he was a young, wiseass pilot, was sensitive. He saw my face after we landed, approached, and said, “Iftach, your two bombs missed, but we stuck seven bomb loads out of eight in the bull’s-eye. As our commander, look at the final result. You should be proud.”
And again Raz recalled something: he produced the champagne bottle I had bought for the team after the operation. On it was written, in my handwriting, a mysterious mathematical formula that even Einstein couldn’t have grasped: “7/8=100%.”
All of us in the room laughed.
I knew some people thought I shouldn’t have flown that mission in the first place, and in hindsight they may be right. Some of them told me their opinion straight out. “High-ranking officers,” they proclaimed, “should manage, not fly.” There is some truth in that, but still I want to add something I didn’t say that evening. I had a friend from childhood, Daniel Vardon. He had personality for sure, and he also crawled into the enemy’s fire not once, but several times. Danny was decorated for heroism in battle not less than three times, the last of them after he was killed in the Six-Day War, when he tried to break through enemy fire to pull out wounded soldiers. He acted knowing his duty from inside, and doing without asking “What for?” and “How?” and “Why?” He didn’t pass the buck to others or bother his commanders with questions such as “Which way?” or “When?” or “Who?” I believe that even if there were radar screens in his time to sit behind and send others forward, he wouldn’t have used them. Danny was my example, and a reason for many things I have done in my life.
KAREN YADLIN SAT WITH folded legs on the table at the side of the room, among all the artifacts. Karen is also a character, and wanted to say something different, “to burst this heroic, happy macho bubble.” Her own secret began with the two-family house at Ramat-David housing. On one side the Yadlins lived, and on the other side the young family Ben Amitay.
Udi Ben Amitay was not there. One of the first F-16 pilots, he no doubt would have flown to Tammuz had he not been killed some six months before, in an aerial collision. Udi was the first loss in the new F-16 force. His widow, Esty, and their daughter, Maya, who was a just a newborn when he was killed, were there in the room.
Anyway, Karen, after asking for pardon from Esty and Maya, continued, “On January 20, 1981, I got home from work. In the parking place near our house I saw Spector’s big, black official car.”
What a mistake! I forgot Yak’s lesson from the War of Attrition that my official car should be kept out of family housing during daytime. I should have taken Ali’s red Beetle for that visit, but I didn’t. A few years later I made this mistake again: on my way back from Tel Aviv to Tel Nof, my last command post, I decided to visit Tali, Zorik’s widow and a very good friend. I drove my big, black official car into her parking lot without thinking about it. Her daughter, Ophir—yes, the same Ophir—happened to be home. She saw “Spector’s car” coming. When they opened the door I saw their faces. What an idiot I was! I should have parked two hundred meters away and walked to the house.
Anyway, back to Karen.
“I parked my car,” she continued, “but I couldn’t, just couldn’t, get out. I was in my ninth month. It was clear to me that it was either my husband or Esty’s. I won’t say what I prayed for.” Again she asked Esty’s pardon, and Esty nodded to her to go on. “Then suddenly Nahumi appeared from behind the house. He saw me sitting there and winked at me. So it was not Amos.
“There, for the first time,” concluded Karen, “I understood the burden of the ‘hero’s life.’ I realized that this way of life had its cost, that the risk was truly there. After three months”—and here her secret came out—“I squeezed out of Amos what all these preparations were about, what was the mission you were training for.”
Raz and I looked at each other, and then at Amos Yadlin. He kept quiet.
‡
I WAS VERY SURPRISED at the things coming out here. First Ofra Ivry, and now Karen Yadlin. Operation Opera had been top secret. Not just our lives were dependent on its strict confidentiality, but also the one chance to eliminate the nuclear threat to Israel.
The women had begun to talk, and I thought, “Uh-oh, what do these disclosures say about us?”
THE WIVES’ REBELLION continued. Michal Yoffe was ready with five or six pages. She read her speech from them.
“I met Ali a few months ago,” she began, “and Ali, in her wonderful, easy way, said, ‘Michalush, why don’t you write something nice for the meeting.’ I was so glad we, the women, mattered. Suddenly they want to hear us, too.”
The Yoffes were part of my own life. Duby is the son of Abraham and Mitka Yoffe, both of them ex-Palmach members. Their blond child grew up and in 1972 arrived at the Orange Tail
s to fly and fight with me. Duby began as a reckless boy. The circle I drew in an effort to figure out his personality had a grave breach, which I called irresponsibility. So I treated him harshly and punished him when necessary. I thought if I didn’t act decisively now I would lose him. I think, and Duby also knows, that I was right. He is alive.
During the Yom Kippur War I kept Duby in the hotshot group, whom I warned not to leave formation no matter what.
“You stick to the leader’s wing like glue,” I told them, “and do what he does. Don’t even think about MiGs. MiGs are for other people, not you,” I warned them seriously, and Duby did his job during the war and made no trouble. And I was happy to see that my next prophecy—that he would get his MiGs some other time—also came true.
Duby is a very good-looking guy, light-haired and tall, and with a winning smile. His affair with Michal, who was a cute and verbal operations clerk, was not without difficulties. Michal is the daughter of Ezer Weizman, the former air force commander and later minister of defense and president of Israel. Between the Yoffe and Weizman families there were some past issues, but the young, handsome couple refused to carry the same baggage as their parents and so united the families.
MICHAL CONTINUED HER story. “On the morning of Independence Day, early May 1981, I was getting up with my first son, Iftach, then a two-year-old. It was a typical late spring morning in Ramat-David housing. The boy toddled off to kindergarten. The air was clear and I felt no premonition. For weeks Duby had been reassuring me there was no problem, it was going to be a simple operation, just get into Iraq, total surprise, pull the trigger, and out.”
Duby had been lecturing her for weeks! Karen’s surprise was hardly over, and now here was Michal. I couldn’t help thinking, Oh, boy, had I known this in 1981, Duby would have been locked up again, this time not alone and surely not for just thirty-five days. But I kept quiet. Tammuz had been bombed twenty years ago, and my time of imposing discipline also was over.
“I asked Duby,” continued Michal, “‘Why did you tell me? Isn’t this a violation of orders?’ and Duby answered, ‘If I am hanged in Baghdad’s Central Square, I don’t want you to be surprised, since you would never forgive me. It’s important to me that you know why I’m risking my life.’ For the first time in our life together,” said Michal, her eyes on her papers, “Duby revealed his vulnerability.”
That was true. Duby was never pathetic. He was the total opposite, light and happy, the classic golden boy, succeeding in everything without perceptible effort, enjoying himself and finding grace in everybody’s eyes. Such dark musings really didn’t fit him. And I thought, “So this was what my pilots, even lighthearted ones such as Duby, were talking about on Independence Day 1981, a whole month before the mission? Duby, Raz’s deputy and supposedly not in the loop, knew of the forthcoming operation. Who else knew? Who among them all didn’t?”
“And on the morning of the attack, on the Feast of Weeks, the housing became empty,” continued Michal, “and little Iftach and I went to spend the holiday at my parents’ home. We sat in the pickup that took us to Caesarea and hugged like two abandoned children.”
She couldn’t talk freely even with her father, Ezer Weizman. He, who was accustomed to know everything, was out of the loop.
“My father asked, ‘Where is Duby? Let’s call him,’ and I lied to him. ‘Duby is on standby, Duby is tired from a hard week, he is asleep in the ready room now, we can’t call him.’ I disconnected myself from everything, kept busy with Iftach’s doll, with his diapers. No, I am not at the Central Square in Baghdad, I am here in Caesarea with my parents and my child. And then, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the telephone rings. Mitka, Duby’s mother, who was then a secretary in the government, was on the line: ‘Michalush, pour a glass of cognac.’ I couldn’t hold it anymore and told Father, ‘Duby is on his way back from Baghdad.’”
Michal fell silent. I kept my eyes on the floor.
‡
ILAN RAMON GOT UP TO SPEAK. Our astronaut was, as usual, very well turned out, and very handsome in his crew cut. He began by declaring that he would speak briefly, and he did. He also said that his talk was going to be out of synch with our conversation, and in this he was totally wrong.
“As number eight, the tail-end charlie, the one destined to be hanged in Baghdad’s Central Square…” That’s how he began.
Again, Central Square.
There was some truth behind this macabre image. There is a common belief among fighter pilots that the tail of the formation is a more risky place to fly than at its head, where the leader flies, and that the chance of the last ones being hit is greater.
There is some logic to it, together with very meager statistics, and a lot of superstition. The problem emanates from the fact that the more senior and experienced pilots fly in the lead: they navigate and command. In the air battle commanders can’t lead from behind—find the target and make critical decisions in changing situations. The natural outcome is that the younger, less experienced pilots fly in the back, and there they nurse their fears. Actually, in the Yom Kippur War I was aware of this superstition, and assigned senior leaders—mainly myself—to fly sometimes as tail-end charlie. I believe I occupied that slot for three or four missions while others led the formation. It had some advantages: it provided opportunities to supervise other leaders in action, and it gave everybody a good lesson. In short, I never gave much credence to the myth that the tail end of the formation was more hazardous.
But now, in 2001, when I first heard what kind of thoughts were going through the minds of the two pilots in the last pair—Relik with his Concentration Camp Stutthof and Ilan with his Baghdad’s Central Square—I thought maybe I hadn’t been tuned in enough to the feelings of my men. Perhaps I had been too remote from them—an “old man,” a senior, busy officer. I had lost contact with their secret pilots’ culture and didn’t understand the vocabulary. Did it come from being burdened with work? Had I really lost contact? Or had my inner child refused to regard that mission as a really serious risk?
I do remember the usual operational tension in me before that mission, more or less the same as in many flights into Egypt and Syria. After all, Baghdad’s Central Square didn’t frighten me more or less than those of Damascus or Cairo. So when those morbid images were revealed to me for the first time in 2001, I was angry at myself. How dumb was that, experienced combat leader that I was supposed to be? And then I asked myself whether my squadron commanders, Raz and Nahumi, had been any more tuned in than I. Did they sense what was going on with their men? What did they do about it? How come I haven’t heard a word from them?
ILAN CONTINUED, “MY MOTHER is a survivor of the Holocaust. She survived Auschwitz. And before I went on the Tammuz operation—and I understood there was a chance of my staying on in Iraq—I thought about my mother, and Auschwitz, and what had happened to the Jews, and decided that such a thing must never be repeated. And if for that reason I must remain in Iraq, well, so be it.”
While Ilan spoke, and he was speaking in a way free from any suggestion of pathos, I realized that this was different from any debriefing I had ever been to. Such words, clear and simple, could never march together with analyses of tactics and summing up of battles. They simply had no place to be said, and no commander had ever heard his people describing their mission in terms like these. And I looked at Ilan Ramon the astronaut of 2001, and recalled this fine young man of twenty years before, and thought I probably should have taken my place even farther back in the formation, to strengthen the tail. I was number six in line, and Relik and Ramon were seven and eight, and I probably should have flown as number seven or eight. But no one can fix the past according to deep secrets disclosed twenty years after, and anyway, Relik and Ilan were much more capable on the F-16 than I was, and better shots. I flew there for a wholly different reason.
AS ILAN PROMISED US, he didn’t indulge in long descriptions of the flight but had something special to say. “These days I a
m an astronaut, but the interesting thing I bring here tonight is not space, but our Jewish nation. We in Israel are sometimes too closed inside our small pasture and forget that we are but part of the great Jewish people.
“I met some Holocaust survivors in America. I asked them what I should take with me into space, something symbolic that might connect that dark time to what I do now. And one of them, an eighty-year-old man with a simple knowledge of English, came over and handed me a letter. Let me read it to you.”
Ilan drew a page out of his pocket and read it to us: “To the glory of the people of Eretz Israel and the diaspora, and to Mr. Ilan Ramon. I would propose that you take into space with you as a symbol, the dirty towel of my seven-year-old daughter, which she made into a doll. I wouldn’t give my daughter’s doll to just anyone, but she took it with her to Auschwitz, and her ashes are still there. But you, Ilan, when you are close to heaven, open it and let them there apologize for not answering our prayers. I still keep asking, ‘Why? Why?’” It was signed “Leo Agen.” Ilan folded the page and put it back in his pocket.
“This is the connection that moved me in 1981 and made me ready to sacrifice myself,” he said. “We must not forget that the Tammuz operation was done for the whole Jewish nation.”
‡
LATER, WHEN WE ALL SCATTERED around the colorful tables for the night’s dinner, I scolded Ilan again for not bringing his wife, Rona, with him from the United States. Ali and I still hadn’t met her.
“She had to stay with the children,” Ilan apologized. The names of their four children are identical to the children’s names in our own family: Tal, Assaf, Iftach, and the girl, Noah.
Later, Ramon sent us a letter from the United States: “To Ali and Iftach. Thanks, thanks, thanks for the most special and fascinating evening. Perhaps with age we become more open and express our feelings better. Iftach,” he added, “I was surprised by your disclosure, and I have only the highest regard for what you said. And in general, I appreciate you, your calm way and even disposition.”
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