by Moshe Betser
Shlomo briefs me on what happened to Amitai.
On the banks of Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, waiting for our next move during the Yom Kippur War, I found three oranges in my pocket with which to practice my juggling.
DEATH IN THE MANGO GROVES
“Landing, we expected resistance. Instead, it felt like a deluxe trip to a magnificent view. The ragged peaks of Jebel Ataka looked down over a vast territory. Due east was the Eygptian Third Army, blanketing the flatland between the Suez Canal and the Mitla Pass, inside Sinai. To our northeast, Bren’s division advanced toward Suez to complete the siege, at the southern mouth of the canal on the Suez Gulf. It all looked like pieces on a vast chessboard.”
Right after landing on the strategic peak, we took a short coffee break. By the end of our first day, we needed to share our water and hardtack rations — cakes of protein and nutrients — with forty Egyptian prisoners.
THE IDF OPTION
“‘Battalion commanders in the Ugandan Army ride around in Mercedeses with chauffeurs and a couple of Land Rovers of soldiers behind them,’ I suggested. ‘With that disguise, we could drive through into any military installation in the country without stopping. By the time they figure out who we really are, we’ll be on the job.’”
We brought the Mercedes home with us from Entebbe. Here I’m standing beside it as the rear doors to the plane open.
They would watch the Syrians pass and then block a U-turn. A third force-mine-waited west of Ehud, to block the Syrians in case they got through.
Heading into Lebanon, my force-mounted on three armored personnel carriers-would pass a small UN position, stationed in south Lebanon since the armistice agreement at the end of the War of Independence. Then, a few dozen meters away, we would pass an even smaller Lebanese police checkpoint, before heading in Ehud’s direction.
I briefed my soldiers carefully. “They don’t expect us,” I told the team I picked for the job. “But it’s not unusual for them to see us in the area on patrols. We just don’t want them to think we’re on our way to action nearby. So, keep your barrels lowered, and look relaxed as we drive by.”
Ehud and his fighters crept in by foot during the night, finding camouflage in the natural terrain of shrubbery and boulders along the side of the road where we wanted to catch the convoy. Dado ran the command-and-control center from a grove near the border.
My three APCs waited on our side of the border for the command. Just after noon, I heard Ehud’s voice over the network. “They’re coming,” he said. I signaled my men to be on alert. The APC engines revved.
“Two sedans,” I heard Ehud report back to Dado. “One Land Rover … two jeeps … an armored personnel carrier …”
“Halt!” said a voice on the radio network. I recognized it as Motta Gur, commander of the Northern Command, running the operation with Dado from the field headquarters in the grove.
“It’s okay,” Ehud protested. “It is no problem for us.” The radio static clicked on and off for a second. I field my breath waiting for the next voice.
Dado took command from Motta. “No,” he decided.
“I request authorization to proceed,” Ehud insisted. I heard the tension in his voice. “I see them. A few meters away. I can jump them now.”
“No,” Dado said emphatically. “No authorization.”
I sighed, understanding that Ehud had mentioned the armored personnel carrier because he wanted to portray the events accurately, not because he thought it meant trouble. Less than a minute later, the convoy of Syrian officers and their Lebanese security drove past me on the Lebanese road below. We had practiced for just such a formation. But the generals had decided the Lebanese APC made the operation too risky.
One of the most frustrating moments I have ever experienced, it felt like we betrayed our POWs. We remained in position another few minutes. Then Ehud called us all into the grove, where Dado and Motta waited.
All the force commanders spoke that afternoon, but Ehud led the charge. “I gave a truthful report,” he began, containing his anger’s tone, but not its message. “I never expected that the presence of an APC would make you decide not to act. We prepared for the presence of an APC. It posed no threat. Your decision made us cancel an operation that might be the last chance we get to free those boys.”
Dado and Motta listened like schoolkids being reproached by an angry teacher, and Ehud went on. “But the worst thing about your decision,” said Ehud, “is that you created a situation where next time, we might not report all the information we have, worried that you will make a decision like today’s.”
Motta deferred to Dado, whose scowl showed the conflict inside him. An orphan who had escaped from Yugoslavia as a youngster during the Nazi occupation, he fought in the Palmach and rose in the army. Instead of shutting us up with a reminder of his rank, he let us release the anger, proving his greatness as a commander. His head bowed low, a stick in his hand scratching patterns in the dark hard ground of the grove, he listened to each of the senior officers. We all backed Ehud.
Finally, Dado looked up at us. “Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “I just hope we get another chance.”
Less than a week later, we did. Ehud called in the staff officers to announce the Syrian reconnaissance was returning the next day. “This time, I’m not taking any chances,” he promised. “I’m going to stay with the generals, and if they make any trouble, I’ll explain that we can do it.”
He gave Yonni command of the main force, and we added an element to the operation — two decoy cars, hoods up, looking like breakdowns, parked by the side of the road. Along with the cars full of fighters, troops from the Unit lined the road, dug in and camouflaged in the rough terrain.
Again I took the mobile flanking force in front of the Syrian convoy, while a company from Egoz waited at the back. But we added a tank to my force, to ease the generals’ concerns. Once again, we planned a three-sided box around the target. Egoz took the east; my half-company took the west.
Around eleven that morning, the Egoz force reported sighting an approaching convoy-two Land Rovers and two armored cars, moving south toward Rameish, the village on the other side of the Lebanese border road.
But about half a mile north of the village, the convoy stopped. Yonni’s force, both those hidden in the landscape and those waiting in the two cars ready to zip down to the Lebanese road, went on high alert. I gave the order to start the engines.
The minutes ticked by slowly. At eleven twenty-five, Ehud sent the two decoy cars down to the Lebanese road. I could not see them from my position-only when I reached the road-but according to the plan they would roll to a stop beside the road, fighters scrambling to take cover, joining other fighters who had waited all night in position. One of Yonni’s soldiers, disguised as a civilian, raised the hood of the first car, to make it look like a breakdown.
But as so often happens in a special operation, the unexpected changed everything. A VW van appeared on the road, approaching the Syrian convoy. It pulled up beside the two Land Rovers and two armored cars, and then made a U-turn and sped away. One of Yonni’s fighters ran to him with news of the VW’s appearance. The Syrian convoy began to turn around, an arduous process for four large vehicles like the Land Rovers and armored cars on the narrow road. The Egoz scouts reported the VW’s suspicious movement to Ehud. Disappointment began to well in my chest as the report of the VW came over the network. The generals would cancel again, I feared.
But the brilliance of the Unit includes the ability to improvise, a tradition carried down from the Palmach. Ehud gave the order. Yonni’s force burst into action, some racing in the two decoy cars the few hundred yards to the Syrian convoy, waiting for its lead armored car to make the U-turn. As the two cars pulled up to the Syrian convoy, other fighters popped out of their hiding places on the slope above the road, only a few dozen meters away.
My APCs stormed forward, with the tank lumbering after us in the rear. In thirty seconds we reached the Lebanese
road below us. Passing the UN position and the Lebanese policemen, I watched their bored expressions change to shock. But my soldiers kept their barrels down, just as I had told them, and from my position at the front of the open APC I smiled down at the Lebanese.
Ahead of us, I saw one of our Arabic-speaking officers standing on a boulder above the road, shouting, “Freeze! Surrender!” through a loudspeaker at the Syrians and their Lebanese guards. While some of Yonni’s troops pulled the Arabs out of the two cars, others field the two Lebanese armored cars at gunpoint.
Just before I came into view, Lebanese soldiers in one of the armored cars tried to shoot back. Yonni’s fighters cut them down. But as I appeared on the road, I saw our only casualty in the operation. The officer with the loudspeaker fell, clutching his ankle where a Lebanese bullet had struck him.
As my APC pulled up to the fracas, Yonni’s fighters blindfolded the last of the Syrians, who kept shouting “No blood! No blood” as they hustled him and his friends into the two decoy cars to take back to Israel. Meanwhile, my soldiers loaded the five captured Lebanese soldiers onto the APCs.
Suddenly, I noticed a Syrian officer and a Lebanese soldier trying to escape north across a plowed field on the fourth, open, side of the three-sided box we had made around the convoy. I gave the order to chase them down, but they managed to get down a steep slope, away from our clutches. We turned around, heading for the border. As we crossed the border back into Israel, one of the five Lebanese wounded in the firefight died on board my APC.
Ehud, Dado, and Motta, along with other grinning senior officers, watched as we handed over the prisoners to an interrogation force to hold them until their release in exchange for our POWs. Everything had worked so far. Settling down into the standard debriefing that immediately follows every special operation, we waited for Dado to begin, certain that in a few hours or days our POWs would be home.
Beaming, Dado scanned the faces of the soldiers and officers sitting in front of him on the ground. “This cancels last week’s mistake,” he began. “And now the Syrians have some incentive to return our boys. Our prisoners include a general, and,” Dado paused for effect, “two colonels from Syrian Air Force Intelligence.”
Syrian dictator Hafez el-Assad began his career in the air force. We immediately understood that capturing two intelligence colonels from his power base inside the Syrian Army field the key to a successful exchange.
By nightfall, Israel made the following secret offer to the Syrians: We will not publicize this humiliation. We will return your people this very night — in a prisoner exchange for our people. Within a few hours I heard Damascus agreed to the trade.
But, very quickly, Golda Meir’s government figured that if the Syrians, the most stubborn and obstinate of our enemies, agreed so quickly to our terms, then Damascus could use its influence in Egypt. Cairo field ten of our soldiers, including pilots shot down during the War of Attrition. We field several dozen Egyptian POWs.
Obviously, such a process is long and complex — and the politicians did not know how to keep a secret. The story of the kidnapping leaked. Negotiations as delicate as those do not work well under the limelight of world attention. The Egyptians refused to cooperate. Eight months went by. Finally, our side returned to the original offer made to the Syrians: release our boys, and you’ll get yours. The Syrians agreed.
A few weeks later, the air force threw a party for the three freed POWs, and invited us to the celebration. Taking seats at the back of the hall, we wore civilian clothes. It was a very emotional evening.
The former POWs went up onstage to describe their experiences under Syrian torture in the long months of isolation in the dank underground cells of Damascus. They carried Pini Nahmani, in a wheelchair, onto the stage. “While we sat in prison in Damascus, we always hoped the guys from Sayeret Matkal would show up to get us out,” he said.
We all squirmed uncomfortably. A nice thing to say; we appreciated the compliment — but it was the last thing in the world we wanted to hear in public. Our strength as a force capable of surprising the enemy relied on the secrecy of our unit. The censor made sure Pini’s remarks about our existence never left the room.
THE JOB
No celebrations or treats for special warriors follow a Sayeret Matkal operation. The day after the capture of the five Syrian officers, we went back to work.
Like every unit in the IDF, Sayeret Matkal combines regular soldiers with reservists. But while most Israeli veterans of the universal draft can expect thirty days of reserves a year, Sayeret Matkal fighters can expect to do upward of sixty.
Reservists participate at all levels of the daily activities of the Unit. They train on new weapons, learn new tactics and drills. They help plan new missions, drill for upcoming operations, take courses in their specialties, and help plan new missions.
On a typical day, one team of fighters might be on a combined movement-and-camouflage exercise in the Negev, while a second group is on a security check somewhere in the country. Back at the base, a team might be testing a new method for recapturing a hijacked airplane (Sayeret Maktal’s base has its own runway), while another squad is trying out an Israel Military Industries (IMI) prototype of a new assault rifle or a new kind of night-scope, while others study aerial photographs of a terrorist command headquarters the Unit wants to take out. And finally, a standing unit of fighters is always on standby, ready in case of an emergency involving terrorists holding hostages. If necessary, they can be on a chopper within minutes for action anywhere in Israel.
Avraham Arnan founded Sayeret Matkal as a special force capable of responding immediately to emergencies requiring unconventional military solutions, and for highly specialized reconnaissance missions into enemy territory. Inspired by David Stirling, the founder of the British SAS, Arnan established Sayeret Matkal during Yitzhak Rabin’s tenure as IDF chief of staff. Arnan made the Hebrew translation of Stirling’s book Who Dares Wins required reading for new recruits, issued to them along with their weapons in their first days in the Unit.
But as the Formula One of the infantry, where new methods are tried out and developed so they can eventually be transferred to all the infantry units of the army, the chief infantry and paratroops officer carries the Unit’s brief in the chief of staff’s office. Nonetheless, many career-track officers coming out of Sayeret Matkal chose intelligence as the next step on their professional ladder, supplying their colleagues back at Sayeret Matkal the data we needed to come up with operational plans for the problems we faced.
Every chief of staff knew the names of all the senior officers in Sayeret Matkal, the ultimate small army of the IDF. The Unit’s commander, usually a colonel, has direct access to the chief of staff. Arnan’s concept gave us an independence that no other unit — except perhaps certain fighter wings — enjoy in the IDF.
With our own budget, we decided what we needed to buy — or pay to have developed. With access to the highest ranks of command for intelligence and full logistical support from other branches of the army, we could initiate operations, as well as take assignments and develop operations, as well as suggest missions.
But of all the differences between Sayeret Matkal and the rest of the army, one thing distinguished it above all else: Sayeret Matkal does not prepare for war. Arnan considered the Unit too valuable for the chaos of warfare. Instead, the Unit’s task is threefold: to perfect capabilities; to plan and execute operations; and to develop new fighting doctrines for the tasks created by international terrorism.
Like every sayeret in the IDF, the Unit takes its basic recruits from the draft three times a year from the Tel Hashomer induction center. My basic training for the paratroops sayeret lasted almost a year. I taught a six-month basic training course in Egoz. The basic training of a Sayeret Matkal fighter is much, much longer.
At the end of their basic training, juniors win Sayeret Matkal pins in a very private ceremony attended only by other members of the Unit. From then on, the fighter is consi
dered combat-ready — but more training lies ahead. If he is lucky, during that period he might get picked to participate in an operation.
Yonni trained new recruits until he became Ehud’s deputy. Now, I became responsible for making fighters out of people with the basic combination of high intelligence, technical ability, and physical fitness required of any special forces unit.
But I also looked for integrity in my fighters, as well as native skills that went beyond what could be taught. From driving to shooting, swimming to climbing, everyone learned every skill — but some would always be better than others in their particular talent. It’s the toughest regimen in the IDF, and many, if not most, are unable to complete the course.
Familiarity with the IDF’s entire arsenal of personal weapons, ranging from those made by the Israel Military Industries (IMI) to those acquired either in the world arms market or as booty from the enemy, is elementary in Sayeret Matkal.
First and foremost, scouts must observe and report accurately. Sayeret Matkal fighters learn to use all the observation and communications instruments available to the IDF. Night-scopes, cameras, binoculars, and radios of all types and sizes — a Sayeret Matkal fighter is proficient with them all.
Maps — reading them and drawing them accurately — as well as aerial photographs, become as easy to decipher as a newspaper. The soldiers learn to move, and hide in, every kind of terrain. In tiny Israel, the topography ranges from the snows of Mount Hermon to the desert canyons of the Negev. Sayeret Matkal is at home everywhere in the country.
They learn camouflage techniques, taking care of their air supply and waste disposal, living on hard, dry compressed tack, proving they know how to stay cool with the enemy walking over their heads. Self-control and presence of mind are as critical as a fighting spirit. At least once during their initial training, they are kidnapped — literally off the street in civilian clothes, sometimes — and taken prisoner to see if they can stand up to the pressures of interrogation, believing that their tormentors truly are Arabs. Sayeret Matkal always makes sure that many, if not most, of its soldiers know Arabic. I don’t — except for basic farmer’s talk. My specialties lie elsewhere.