by Michael Ross
In the months that followed, we patrolled the West Bank and did house-to-house searches for wanted terrorists. Sometimes it would dawn on me that Roman soldiers no doubt walked the same beat two thousand years ago. When I mentioned this thought to our company commander, he took a serious tone, reminding me that our little patrols were what prevented the whole territory from falling into anarchy. We also provided security on Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, and I guarded buses used to ferry international pilgrims to Manger Square in Bethlehem. People stared at me and my kit as I rode with them. Though I carried my Galil for such tasks, I tried not to alarm anyone. I remember an American boy, about six years old, staring at me during one bus tour. I smiled at him and asked if he’d been a good boy for Santa. His parents’ mouths dropped open in shock. They seemed amazed that an Israeli soldier would know anything about Santa, let alone speak fluent English.
Another memory stands out vividly. An Israeli civilian had been shot at one night while driving to her West Bank home. Five of us set up an improvised roadblock to cut off the terrorists’ escape. They never came, but an older man in an Arab headdress came riding up. “Sabach al-hir (good morning ),” he said. I gave him the standard reply, “Sabach al-noor,” which means “good light.”
It was almost dawn and we got word on the radio to stand down. The wizened Arab produced a coffee finjan, a single-handled pot for making Turkish coffee—known in Israel as botz, or “mud,” because of the large amount of sediment left behind in the glass. We lit a fire and filled the finjan with water, and the visitor added scoops of cardamonlaced Turkish coffee. We added sugar, and when the brew started to boil over we poured it into some small glasses he’d brought. We sat around the fire Bedouin-style and drank the coffee.
I live on the west coast of Canada and, true to regional stereotype, am a premium-coffee addict. But nothing has ever matched the coffee we had that morning. When I look back, I see a quintessential Middle East moment: two cultures sharing a common pleasure without the fetters of politics and terror. The old gentleman knew we meant him no harm, and we respected him and his culture. His generation of Palestinians fought long and hard against the nascent Jewish state, but he seemed to know that we need to move on and make some kind of accommodation. Today’s Palestinian youths have been hijacked by a Hamas-led death cult. You would be hard pressed to find any one of them bringing coffee to an Israeli patrol. And if one did, he’d probably be treated as a potential suicide bomber. When I think of the elderly Arab and his kind smile, I feel a sense of loss for both cultures.
Though I conducted lots of patrols in the West Bank, I never fired my weapon. In fact, my most dangerous moment in the army had nothing to do with Palestinian terrorists. I was on a training exercise in the Negev Desert. We were wheeling around in a modified Zelda armored personnel carrier (APC), a tracked vehicle that typically carries about eight soldiers. We were following a ridge line when the crew commander ordered the driver to pull a hard right. Instead, he reacted by pulling a hard left and hitting the gas pedal. We careened over the ridge and went on a roller-coaster ride into the gulley below. When the APC skidded to a stop on its side, I climbed out, shaking like a leaf. After that, I hated APCs.
Some nights, we went out hunting terror cells thought to be operating in our area. But such missions were few and far between. The Palestinian thugs for the most part feared us. On one night I remember well, my group gave chase to a suspicious group of young Arab men we’d spotted while on patrol in the West Bank. I was carrying the shouldercrushing MAG and ammo at full run when my foot went into a hole. I turned my ankle and fell flat on my back. I looked up at the stars for an instant, only to see them blocked out by the MAG coming down square on my face. Instantly, my nose bled like an open faucet. The familiar hands of my friends grabbed me and I was hauled to my feet. A whisper in my ear asked if I was okay, and before I could answer we were off at full flight again.
Later, I went to see the medic—but only because Lieutenant Tal told me to. Like most of the platoon, I avoided the medic like the plague. He terrified us more than any officer. A sullen veteran of the Lebanon invasion, and not overly sympathetic to our cuts and scrapes, he told us while teaching first aid that once you see a fellow soldier step on a mine and lose his sight, both legs, an arm, and his genitalia, other injuries fail to impress. His speech, delivered in an emotionless monotone, really scared the hell out of us, but such horror stories are a necessary wake-up call to anyone whose vision of war injuries is shaped by the bloodless battle scenes of Errol Flynn and John Wayne. Years later, I realized that I had been observing a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
By this point, Israel had expelled Yasser Arafat and his PLO from southern Lebanon, but the void had been filled by Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia and terrorist group that pioneered the use of spectacular suicide bombings—including those against the U.S. embassy and marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. It was terrorism on a scale that had never been seen before in the Middle East.
After sending Western peacekeepers packing, Hezbollah focused its attacks on Israeli troops. In 1985, shortly after I joined the Israeli army, Israel withdrew the bulk of its forces to a newly created “security zone” along the border, and outsourced much of the fighting to the South Lebanon Army, a proxy militia staffed primarily by Lebanese Christians.
I became connected to the war in Lebanon in 1985, when I was transferred from my regular combat engineering post to a reserve unit of the Golani, Israel’s most decorated military brigade. I was happy with the move; as well as having a reputation for bravery and extraordinary accomplishment, the Golani is also famous for its exceptional camaraderie. Soldiers call each other achi, or “my brother.”
I joined the Golani ranks in a demolitions platoon, and was deployed to Lebanon with a unit tasked with securing Israel’s defensive positions in the south of the country, and with keeping the roads free of ambushes and roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). It is no coincidence that this is exactly the type of threat that American forces have encountered in Iraq, and Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. The insurgents in both countries learned their techniques from Hezbollah and their Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers.
My single brush with Hezbollah in the IDF came after a military transport vehicle carrying our soldiers was blown up by a suicide bomber, right next to the border fence between Israel and Lebanon, a bombing that was conducted in retaliation for Israel having destroyed the Hezbollah headquarters in the town of Marrakeh. The suicide bombings were a new phenomenon in the region, and Hezbollah was particularly adept at using suicide truck-bombs to attack IDF units. We were going to retaliate with a technique of our own that didn’t involve trucks or suicide bombs but would hurt Hezbollah nonetheless.
This engagement with Hezbollah would mark the first of my many encounters with the terrorist organization throughout my career in the Mossad. It was the making of a fateful relationship that would start on a dirt track in South Lebanon and end in a warehouse in Johannesburg, South Africa, some sixteen years later.
We were sitting around one sunny afternoon eating, sleeping, and talking trash as soldiers do when they are not soldiering. Then word came that we were going to run an ambush that night. When it grew dark, we congregated in a bunker where a whiteboard with an annotated map explained our mission. Intelligence provided by the IDF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence indicated that Hezbollah militants would be driving vehicles on a road some six miles away from our position in the northwest part of the Israeli security zone. Our mission was to hump out to a preselected position near the road, booby-trap the route with an antitank mine and additional explosives, then hose down (with lead) whatever was left of the Hezbollah vehicles and their occupants.
We organized our kits, saying little. After a few hours, our sergeants and platoon commanders checked our gear in an IDF ritual known as a misdar, or inspection. Afterward, the company commander conducted his own inspection, not only checking gear bu
t also making sure soldiers knew their assigned roles.
I quickly realized that I could die: I was scared.
It may seem odd that such a basic fact of soldiering hit me only after several years spent in two different armies. But I was still young at the time—twenty-four—and like many soldiers, I’d believed dying was what happened to other soldiers. Until now.
We headed off around nine o’clock in silence. Our target wasn’t far, but we had to stop a few times to get our bearings and make sure we were on the right route. At the ambush point, the company commander made a reconnaissance of the road, a narrow dirt track with thorny scrub and rocks on either side. It was pitch black, and he moved with a small patrol and radio operator glued to his side. My platoon commander, Gilad, took me and three other soldiers in the other direction to see if any vehicles were approaching. Meanwhile, other members of my platoon started planting their remote-control explosives in the road. They got the job done quickly. All the materials had been prepared before we departed, so they only had to pull the charges out of their rucksacks and bury them.
The spot was perfect, as there was a high ridge where the rest of the unit could set up—far enough away so as not to be affected by the blast that was to come. We lay in wait there for about six hours in the cool night air. I started to get cold.
The soldiers were quiet save for the occasional whispered commands were passed from one man to the next. We sat in a big circle, each soldier with a leg overlapping the leg of the man next to him, to ensure that we would not be surprised by a roving Hezbollah foot patrol, no matter which direction it came from. This type of ambush defense is called a ma’arav kochav, or “star ambush.” The circle is broken only when the enemy’s direction of approach is determined, at which time the soldier who detects the attacker uses leg movements to signal to his neighbors, who then adjust their position to face the target. (The commander usually lines up in the direction that the enemy is supposed to approach from, so in most cases the soldiers know to line up on his position.)
Just when I thought we’d come out for nothing, we heard vehicles approaching. We silently shifted into a line on the ridge facing the road. I took my Galil off safe mode and waited.
In those days, Hezbollah would tear around the countryside in big dust-covered Mercedes-Benz sedans. They’d pile into them and drive hell-bent for leather on any kind of road. On that night, there was a convoy of two.
Suddenly there was a huge flash in my peripheral vision and then a solid ka-thunk noise. Flames shot up in a mushroom shape and then dissipated into the black night. Both cars had been damaged by the explosion, one more seriously than the other.
The next thing I heard was Gilad’s ferocious shout of “ESH!” (Fire!). Bullets and streaks of white light began raining down on the two Mercedes. I took aim at the less damaged vehicle and let loose with my Galil, firing single shots in semi-automatic mode. I got off thirty rounds—my last two being phosphorous flashing tracer, an indication that I needed to change magazines. I had just put in my second magazine and released the action when I heard a succession of voices in our company repeat the word “CHADAL!” (Cease fire!).
Some of us secured the ridge while the company commander descended to the wreckage. After a minute or two, we were commanded to get into formation for the return hike. My adrenalin was pumping, and I was on an incredible high. The only disappointment was that I never even got a single look at the enemy. We returned for our debriefing, and word was that we’d killed eight Hezbollah militants.
The next day, I had time on the long bus ride home to my kibbutz from the border town of Kiryat Shemona to reflect on the night’s events. It was my first, and last, taste of real combat. I suppose that I was a lot closer than modern warfare allows most combatants these days.
After my army service ended in 1985, I received a discreet letter from an obscure department of the Israeli government inviting me for an interview. It was my first contact with the Mossad and thereafter my military service would turn into another kind of service.
3
INTO THE BREACH
Tom Bishop: “It’s not a fucking game!” Nathan Muir: “Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it is. It’s no kid’s game, either, but a whole other game. And it’s serious, and it’s dangerous, and it’s not one you want to lose.”
FROM THE MOVIE Spy Game
It was mid-afternoon on a warm day in December 1989, and I was driving around Tel Aviv with no belt, no shoelaces—and little composure. My hands were shaking as I struggled to guide my tiny four-speed Subaru through traffic. I’d just suffered forty-eight hours of humiliating, painful interrogation. I was relieved but also afraid. I was happy to see the sky and feel the fresh air on my face after spending two days in a tiny cell. But I was also terrified that the ordeal might not be over—that I would be re-arrested and subjected to the same Kafkaesque scenario all over again.
I was looking for a pay phone, glancing nervously in my rear-view mirror every few seconds to see if I was being followed. From the parking lot of a gas station, I called Oren, my Mossad supervisor.
Speaking in code, I told him that I needed a “crash”—an emergency meeting with him at a pre-arranged location. Once the arrangements were made, I hung up, drove to a nearby hotel, and tried to clean up in the washroom. The staff and passing guests eyed me with distaste, probably thinking I’d woken up in a nearby alley after a bender. Having gone several days without a shower, I’m sure I smelled the part.
Once I felt halfway presentable, I made my way to a lounge overlooking a restless blue Mediterranean. While I waited for Oren, I calmed myself by watching the waves break against the rocks. As a young boy growing up in Oak Bay on Vancouver Island, I’d enjoyed a similar scene walking along Beach Drive and Dallas Road. Not for the first time, I thought about the circumstances that had conspired to make me trade that view for this one.
Oren arrived, accompanied by a Mossad psychologist named Elan. Almost before they’d taken their seats, I started pouring out everything that had happened. My voice broke here and there, but I managed to get through it without crying. They watched me with solemn expressions as I spoke, never interrupting.
When I’d signalled I was done, Oren looked at me and said, “I know all about it. I was in the next room while you were being interrogated. So was Elan. You were always within range of one of our cameras.”
I froze. Then I flashed back to my cell and the odd wall coverings placed throughout the room: the oil painting of a cornfield and the travel posters—one of Greece, the other of Croatia—opposite one another on the far sides of the rectangular room. I started thinking about that stock scene from a hundred TV dramas, in which a team of cops work over some poor sap while men in suits, casually drinking coffee and exchanging jaded wisecracks, watch from behind one-way glass. The roles were clear: these were the men in suits and I was the sap.
By this time, I was six months into my training as a Mossad agent. When I’d been arrested by narcs a few days before, I thought I’d stumbled into some sort of random snafu—an embarrassing screw-up that might get me labelled a druggie and kicked out of my training program. Now I realized this was my training program. The cell, the interrogation, this seaside debriefing—they were all part of a test to see if I could maintain my cover under duress.
Up until this point, I’d put up with everything that had been thrown at me. But arresting a guy, putting him in jail, knocking him around until he resembled a barely continent lowlife—this was too weird, too demeaning. My reaction to Oren’s cool confession was that I wanted out.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this sort of thing,” I told him. “I’d like to go home.”
The journey to this moment began three years earlier, shortly after I’d finished reserve service in the Israeli Defense Forces. At the time, I was living with my wife and infant son on the kibbutz. Between working the land and taking care of my family, the kibbutz was my world. This was the era before the Internet or cheap intern
ational phone calls, so my communication with family and old friends was restricted to the blue aerograms that occasionally made it from Canada.
Then, one day, I received an odd piece of mail from the Israeli government. The brief letter was typewritten, unsigned, and composed in the formal style that typifies Israeli official correspondence. (Since I began learning Hebrew, I had observed that it is almost two separate languages, one spoken and one written. The written form is very formal, and uses words that are never used in the spoken form.) Yet something about the document stood out: the phrasing was cryptic and obfuscated by bureaucratic jargon. The upshot was that I’d been selected to interview for a vaguely defined job in the domain of “international co-operation.”
At the time, I was working on the kibbutz’s cotton plantation. The job had its benefits—namely, tear-assing through the fields of the Bet Shean Valley on a dirt bike or in a dusty Jeep. My most vivid memory of life in the field was whiling away the hours spotting Dorcas gazelle, striped hyena, and the dreaded tsepha, or Palestinian viper, a snake so feared that it’s used as a symbol for one of the IDF’s paratroop battalions. On one occasion, I killed a tsepha in the field. When I proudly brought its carcass back to the plantation’s offices, I was scolded for killing such an effective rodent hunter.
Notwithstanding such pleasures, however, I was beginning to realize that irrigation, fertilization, and pest control were not where my heart lay. I considered taking a leave of absence from the kibbutz and heading back to British Columbia with my wife and son, so that they could meet my family and experience life in Canada.