Secret Soldier: The True Life Story of Israel's Greatest Commando

by Moshe Betser

  Finally, back out the front door, he turned. But instead of looking at me, he called out to his soldiers. They doubled-timed it out of the house, lined up and he marched them off.

  Hatred and hostility suddenly replaced the respect and friendship we had felt in the country. The headlines of that morning’s newspaper—“GO BACK TO ISRAEL”—gave us only twenty-four hours to do so. The servants cried, of course, but whether they really loved us or cried because they had just lost their jobs, I will never know.

  The newspaper claimed Israel plotted to overthrow Amin’s government. He decided to let Egyptians and Libyans train his air force, using Mirage jets they promised to provide. He proved his point with typical Amin logic, by explaining that Israel used Mirages to crush the Arab air forces in 1967.

  The Arabs, of course, never supplied the jets, probably because the French would not let them. I did not blame Paris for selling planes to both sides in the Middle East conflict. We more or less did the same in Africa. But in Africa, the only possible threat to Uganda came from Tanzania, where we also trained soldiers. Only once in my three months in Uganda did I hear of any border clashes. I called for a report. The clash was as foolish as the newspaper reports claiming we plotted Amin’s overthrow.

  But the moral issues of geopolitics were far from our minds that day. We four Israeli families that lived in the same neighborhood gathered in one of the houses to plan our escape to Kampala. The question arose whether we would be safer with or without our guns.

  Four Israeli families debating what to do can go on for hours. Some said it would be safer to go unarmed in case a roadblock stopped us for a search. Someone called Burka in Kampala, up to his own ears in the logistics of getting everyone out of the country. Burka left it in our hands. “It’s your call,” he said. “Just get down here as fast as you can.”

  Someone had to make a decision. “Folks,” I decided, “we’re holding on to the guns. We’re traveling as tourists, not soldiers, but we keep the guns for our personal safety. Now, let’s get going.”

  We camouflaged our convoy of cars by moving individually down the road, leapfrogging our way and trying not to draw attention. “We are tourists,” I reminded everyone as each car left. “Nobody is going to bother us.”

  But leaving Jinja, I thought of Karameh. Just as in Karameh I had wondered “Where is the great big IDF?” that had won the Six-Day War, now I wondered to myself “Where’s your country now?”

  For the first time-and may it forever be the last — I felt what it means to be a Jew in exile, a helpless refugee without protection in a foreign country where the authorities are full of hatred for us.

  Burka waited for us in Kampala. We stayed overnight in a hotel in the city and left in the morning on a commercial flight to Nairobi. There, the IDF would take us home in a Stratocruiser.

  Boarding the commercial flight in Entebbe, I mourned for the beautiful country I would miss, and its people, who deserved much better than Idi Amin. But most of all I mourned for my own country, humiliated by a tin-pot dictator.

  I worked hard to get to Uganda, to live in Africa for at least two years. Leaving after four months, I never expected to see Uganda again. Forlorn, I climbed the stairs to the plane, watching four-year-old Shaul climb the stairs clutching Nurit’s hand, unaware that I would return one night under circumstances much different than the disgrace we all felt then.

  THE UNIT

  Nahalal gave me power and strength, because it gave me roots and values that shaped my life, and the freedom to choose between the two ideals of my family-developing the land as a farmer or defending it as a soldier. I loved doing both.

  The rude interruption of our adventure in Uganda forced me to choose between the two values. I returned to the country at a time of a new wave of Arab terror attacks on Israel, both inside the country and against Israeli and Jewish institutions overseas. My African experience began for personal reasons, but its ignominious ending made me realize that Israel still had troubles. I felt I could help.

  As soon as our tenants in Nahalal heard why we had come home, they let us break their lease. But they needed a few days to get organized. Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry gave us a hotel room in Netanya.

  I decided to call Matan Vilnai, now a battalion commander in the paratroops brigade, and one of the youngest in the entire IDF.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered as soon as he recognized my voice. “Where are you?”

  I told him, and we met that afternoon in a small restaurant near the beach. For a long hour we told each other stories, catching up. When I mentioned going back to the army, he offered me a company command in his battalion. From there, I figured, I could get to the job I really wanted-commander of the paratroops sayeret. I accepted his offer.

  But a few days later, I bumped into a friend on the street in Tel Aviv. My plans to go back to the army excited him. “Listen, Muki,” he said. “You’ve got to come to our unit, Sayeret Matkal. It’s the greatest unit now. The Unit. We’re doing serious stuff. Like Sabena.”

  The most secret unit in the Israeli army, under the direct command of the chief of staff, Sayeret Matkal was used for only the most special operations. Founded in the sixties by a legendary fighter named Avraham Arnan, it sat out the Six-Day War because, as Arnan always said, “a Sayeret Matkal fighter is much too valuable for the chaos of war.”

  Instead, Sayeret Matkal, also known as the Unit, only went on missions planned down to the last detail. None of its missions were known to the public-until Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the PLO’s member groups, hijacked a Sabena airliner full of passengers to Israel.

  The plane sat on the runway at Lod’s Ben-Gurion Airport while the country field its breath. Camouflaged as airline technicians and in a perfectly timed assault, the Unit burst into the plane, killing and capturing the hijackers and rescuing the passengers.

  Even after the successful rescue, the first ever in airline history, the army spokesman would only confirm the use of a “special unit.” The military censor killed any story that went beyond that description of Sayeret Matkal. Every army unit is “the unit” for its members. But when cabinet ministers ask the chief of staff if “the Unit” can be used to solve a particular problem, everyone knows they mean Sayeret Matkal.

  “Times are changing,” said my friend. “And we have a great commander. Ehud Barak,” he added. “Sabena proved the Unit’s coming into its own,” my friend said. “And, believe me, when Ehud hears you want to go back to the army, he’s going to want you.”

  “I’m already committed,” I protested. “I made promises. I gave my word to Matan that I’d go to his battalion.”

  “Well, you can’t stop me from telling Ehud that you’re back in the country,” my friend warned as we parted.

  We are a tiny country, and though the army appears large, it is really very small. In the tiny circle of special forces fighters, we all knew of each other, even if we never worked together. I had heard of Ehud. Raised in the Jezreel Valley on a kibbutz, he played piano and studied physics, read history and philosophy — and led the rescue on the tarmac that spring.

  By the time I returned to Netanya that evening, Ehud had left two messages for me to call. It did not surprise me. His reputation as a bulldozer preceded him. “I want to meet you,” he began when I finally got through to answer his calls. “Tomorrow. At your hotel. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “You understand that I’ve already promised Matan, and …” I tried to explain.

  ‘Yes, I know. You promised the paratroops. But I want to come and talk to you. From what I hear about you, the Unit is where you belong.”

  The usual career ladder for the big army included tours in various branches. It can turn into a thirty-year tour for the very best, from the draft all the way to the chief of staff.

  But at twenty-five, I figured life was too short to commit myself to twenty-five years in any one profession. The usual career path — a few years
in special forces, then a few more in the armored corps or the intelligence branch, then back to infantry as a brigadier, and on to the competition for a seat on the general staff-bored me with its predictability and its bureaucratic nature. I wanted to be in special forces-my entire life seemed to prepare me for it. From the traditions of my family through my childhood as an adventuring hiker and into my army service until then, it seemed as if I was being prepared for a unit like Sayeret Matkal.

  Matan’s offer took me back to paratrooping, a basic requirement for every special forces fighter, and my first love in the army. But I knew that if Ehud Barak offered me an interesting job in the general staff’s sayeret, I truly would be at the tip of the IDF spear.

  Short and stocky, Ehud exuded a tremendous energy when he showed up the next day, immediately making a good impression by getting right to the point. He had done his homework, collecting intelligence on me. He knew what I wanted. He came to offer me a job: “I want you as commander of the new recruits, and as a senior staff officer.”

  We sat in a corner of the hotel lobby. “If you only want to come for a year or two, that’s fine,” he began. “You’ll have a great time, and then you can go back to Nahalal and do reserves with us. But if you want an army career, coming to the Unit will also be good for you. It will give you some ideas, enrich you, give you something for the road to bring to other jobs. I promise you, people will get to know you.”

  It won me over. But I gave him a problem. “I promised Matan,” I told Ehud. “You figure out how to solve it.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ll take care of Matan.”

  But after Ehud left, I felt bad. I wanted Matan to hear the news directly from me. I wanted him to know that I did not go behind his back. Ehud came to me, not the other way around.

  Between my hotel lobby phone and Matan on a radio in the field up north, communication directly with him became impossible. But I heard through the grapevine that he had already told his staff officers about my arrival. It put my integrity on the line.

  I borrowed a car and drove to Tel Nof to see Levi Hofesh, then paratroops brigade commander, to ask for his help in the dilemma.

  “Things are getting complicated,” I began. “On the one hand I promised Matan. On the other hand Ehud made me an offer. I want you and Matan to know that whatever you decide is fine with me.”

  “What are you worried about?” Levi smiled at me. “Two commanders are fighting over you!” He laughed. “And between you and me,” the paratroops brigade commander added, lowering his voice, “I would pick Sayeret Matkal.”

  Like Raful and Amos Yarkoni’s argument over me, questions of my next job in the army went to a higher authority. Ehud went directly to chief of staff David “Dado” Elazar. Matan never had a chance.

  I rented an apartment not far from the Sayeret Matkal base, while Nurit and Shaul went back to Nahalal, where I would go home for weekends, holidays, and vacations. A few days later, the phone rang.

  “Muki Betser?”

  “Yes?”

  “Yonni Netanyahu.”

  Drafted three months before me, Yonni served in the paratroops regular brigade while I went to the brigade’s sayeret. Our officers’ training courses had overlapped, but we had never worked together. Now Ehud’s deputy, Yonni’s reputation preceded him. A brave, enthusiastic fighter, he always carried a book of history or philosophy for the hours of waiting in any military operation. “It’s settled, Muki,” he said. “I’m sending a car for you. We’ve got something cooking.”

  When I heard him say “something cooking,” it confirmed everything I had expected from the Unit. Twenty minutes later, a car showed up for me. Within the hour, Ehud gave me an office, a car, a secretary, and a new force of recruits to train. Most important, he gave me an operation to help plan.

  Two years earlier, at the height of the War of Attrition in 1970, Syrian artillery opened fire onto the Golan and Israel, trying to open a second front in addition to the fighting with Egypt from the banks of the Suez Canal.

  Israel fought back with air strikes at the artillery positions inside Syria. An Israeli Air Force Phantom, hit by MiG missiles, fell over Damascus. Gideon Magen, a thirty-two-year-old kibbutznik, and Pini Nahmani, a twenty-six-year-old moshavnik, became the first Israeli POWs in Syria since the end of the Six-Day War.

  Their only sign of life came a few days after their capture. Syria’s state-run television broadcast pictures of them in a Damascus prison. Pini clearly was badly injured, lying on a stretcher. But the Syrians refused to negotiate for their release with the International Red Cross, indeed denied the IRC access to the two Israelis.

  Three months later, the IDF responded. An armored force crossed the Syrian border, capturing thirty-seven Syrian soldiers to take as hostages in a trade. But during the operation, a Mirage flown by Boaz Eitan, a twenty-one-year-old moshavnik, caught a missile from a Syrian MiG.

  Now they field three POWs, whom they considered far more valuable than their own thirty-seven soldiers in our hands. For two years, they ignored our appeals to make a trade through diplomatic channels. The Red Cross had not managed to see our boys. We wanted them back.

  Going into Damascus to get them might be possible — but getting everyone out alive was not. It left one option: kidnapping someone much more valuable to the enemy than some soldiers.

  The intelligence corps came up with reconnaissance tours conducted by high-ranking Syrian intelligence and air force officers along the Lebanese-Israeli border. They usually traveled in a convoy of civilian cars for the officers, escorted by Lebanese forces, including motorcycle-mounted Military Police, jeeps, and Land Rovers. Lebanese Army armored-car escorts passed them off along sectors of the border.

  If we grabbed the officers unharmed as they moved along the patrol road on the Lebanese side, we could offer them back to Damascus in exchange for our boys.

  From Metulla to Rosh Hanikra on the Mediterranean coast, the parallel border roads on our side and the Lebanese side are separated by only a few hundred meters, except for a few places where the gap narrowed to a few dozen meters.

  We wanted to be as close to the border as possible, in an area where vegetation and terrain provided cover. Intelligence decided on the region of Kibbutz Zar’it, where orchards right up to the border road provided good cover before we dashed down a slope into Lebanese territory.

  Called the box, the operation maneuvered three forces-one to surprise the targets, and two others to flank them and close escape routes-into a box surrounding the target. Much of the preparation for the mission depended on timing. Intelligence would tip us off twenty-four hours in advance of one of the Syrian patrols.

  “With delicacy,” Ehud described the operation. If we went in blasting away, dead Syrian officers would be useless in a prisoner exchange. We needed to surprise them with such an overwhelming show of force that they would prefer to surrender than to put up any opposition. But a large force on the border would draw the attention of the Lebanese and scare off the Syrians. We wanted an operation that only the Syrians-and we-knew about. We could let Damascus know that very night that we field the officers, and offer to make the exchange.

  The Unit had already tried the maneuver once, just before I arrived. But at the last minute, just as the convoy made its approach, Dado called it off, citing reports of unexpected Lebanese forces in the area.

  Just after my arrival, I joined a second attempt. Ehud and his small force hunkered down in camouflage on the Lebanese side of the border, to handle the grab. A second force waited east of Ehud. 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.

  BASIC VALUES, BASIC TRAINING

  “As trainees for a sayeret, we worked harder in our platoon than the two other platoons of trainees. While they did a six-mile march, we hiked a dozen. When they finished twelve miles, we did another fifteen. All our platoon officers and trainers came from the sayeret, not
the regular battalion. From the start, they gave us the feeling that those who lasted through the course would belong to a very special family of soldiers and officers.”

  I’m the one propped up on my elbow on the ground beside the platoon machine-gun barrel.

  THE NIGHT OF THE WELLS

  “The truth is that I never considered the army as a professional career. I regarded it as my duty as a citizen, and my responsibility as a bearer of the traditions of my family. While in the army, I wanted to do my best. I believed I did. The dilemma chased me during my entire life in the army. As deep in my heart as my love of Nahalal and home, I loved the spirit of special operations, and now, faced with the question of going home or more time in the army, I knew I wanted to be an officer.”

  Yitzhak Rabin — then — chief of staff — reviews a graduating class of new officers. As usual, I was the tallest in my unit.

  SMOKE OVER KARAMEH

  “My life seemed perfect in early March 1968. I was married to my childhood sweetheart, father to a newborn son; my unit was the most famous of all the special reconnaissance forces the IDF calls a sayeret. The newspapers called us the ‘tip of the spear.’”

  The day before Karameh, at brigade headquarters.

  YOM KLPPUR

  “Right then, nobody could have ordered battle-hungry Sayeret Matkal fighters to get down from the half-tracks. Giora told the transport major to file whatever report he wanted. Meanwhile, we had a war to fight.”

  Aboard our half-tracks on the Golan.

  GOING SOUTH

  “Just before dawn, we found Baidatch and the rest of the force, just where he had promised. ‘Amitai told us to wait behind while he went in with Amiram, Cheetah, and Moshe,’ Shlomo began mournfully. ‘They figured the Egyptians all ran away. We should have gone building by building.’ Although shaken up by what happened, he gave a clear and concise briefing. ‘They drove down the runway advancing on the field. That’s when the enemy hit. Under fire, we got the wounded out. But we couldn’t reach Amitai. He’s still lying there.’”