by Moshe Betser
“After all that killing,” said the intelligence colonel, “you might think they had enough. But no. They wanted more.”
From the Cohens’ apartment, they headed north in the direction of the school, where they found the hundred high schoolkids from Safed. After hiking through the Galilee, their field trip group stayed overnight in the Ma’alot high school, closed for a holiday.
By dawn, army units and police had surrounded the school. Thankfully, the army had already learned the first lesson of Kiryat Shmona: no random firefight as soon as the army arrived.
“We waited for you,” said the intelligence officer. Now we all waited for Golda and Dayan to decide whether to give in to the terrorists or use The Unit. Not an easy decision under any circumstances, the Yom Kippur War had undermined the self-confidence and authority of both Golda and Dayan. Demonstrations after the war forced the government to appoint a commission of inquiry to determine responsibility for the failures in the opening phases of the war. The commission forced Dado’s resignation, among others’. Less than a month before Ma’alot, they decided to name Motta Gur as chief of staff, replacing him with Raful as the Northern Command commander.
But the commission of inquiry did not blame the political level for the failures of the war, though it decried a conceptual blindness that imbued the entire defense framework.
So, Golda and Dayan both lost enormous amounts of political strength in the face of the demonstrators demanding someone pay for the 2,569 dead soldiers of the Yom Kippur War. The commission of inquiry’s refusal to blame Golda and Dayan only increased public pressure on them to quit office. They did, but meanwhile remained in power as a transitional government until a new one could be formed. Eventually, Yitzhak Rabin, the chief of staff from 1967, would replace Golda for his first, two-and-a-half year, term as prime minister.
Meanwhile, Dayan still ruled in the field. He showed up in the morning to personally handle the situation. He wore his usual khaki trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, with a cap on his head against the hot sun. He set up headquarters at an apartment building not far from the school, and took control.
One element of the crisis also helped us prepare for its military solution. When the terrorists broke into the school, a number of adults traveling with the group as guides and chaperons jumped out of the second-floor windows, along with some of the children, leaving eighty-five inside with one teacher. The adults who escaped claimed they sought help. At least they provided some intelligence on the terrorists’ weapons and explosives. The school’s principal — one of those adults who escaped rather than lead the kids — told us the terrorists field the kids in two separate classrooms on the second floor of the three-story building.
Driving to Ma’alot, I thought of the time when as a child I encountered my first challenge from “an enemy” and how I froze, not knowing what to do. My teenage camp counselor did know what to do — disarm the assailants with an assault of his own. The schoolkids from Safed might do that to their captors, I hoped, if they moved quickly. They only needed one person to lead them. A teacher, the bus driver, some adult might be able to lead them. But, abandoned, the kids inside the building were like me and my friends at the water spigot outside Hadera.
After the briefing, I took a walk around the perimeter, staying out of the sight of a terrorist who kept lookout over the scene by patrolling an outdoor porch corridor on the second floor, and others on the second floor watching through a classroom window.
Coming around a locked shed at the construction site with a view of the school, I came across Dayan.
I approached silently from behind, watching him. Always brave in the field, he stood with one hand on his hip, the other holding the binocular lens to his single eye to survey the scene, a step away from entering the terrorists’ line of sight from the balcony. He lowered the binoculars.
“Moshe, from here on, only on your belly,” I said, afraid he might take that step.
He turned around and smiled. “How are you, Muki?” he asked, shaking my hand. “What do you think?”
“I still have to go completely around the building,” I said, “but from what I’ve seen up to now, the conditions are relatively good for an assault.”
“I think so too,” he said. “I’m on my way to call Golda, to let her know.”
I followed him back to the emergency field headquarters in the apartment building nearest the school. While Dayan conferred with aides, Giora worked out a basic plan, and we began filling in the details.
Without any formal doctrine about adequate break-in points, optimum firepower, the use of grenades, small caliber or large caliber weapons, we improvised. We set up a net of snipers around the school, looking for all three of the terrorists in our sights at the same time. But the terrorists also knew we waited for such a moment and took care to give us only one target at a time, whether the lookout on the porch or through the window into one of the classrooms where they field the kids.
Obviously, one assault force, running up the stairs to the second-floor classrooms, would not suffice. We already agreed the operation could begin if snipers hit two of the three terrorists, if not all three. I suggested that I take a team up a ladder to the window looking into the classroom where the third terrorist guarded the children. The first fighter up the ladder could get the terrorist, right after the snipers hit. Meanwhile, Amiram Levine’s force, rushing up to the second floor for the break-in, would take out the third terrorist.
A negotiation crew with loudspeakers meanwhile kept the Arabs calm, telling them that the ambassadors they wanted as mediators were on their way and that the government meeting in Jerusalem continued deliberating over their demands to free the terrorists in our prisons.
Hundreds of soldiers laid siege to the school. Military jeeps and cars converged on the area, but we kept everything camouflaged from the terrorists, to make them feel safe, staying out of their line of sight, watching the building and waiting for our moment.
Everything seemed fine until a Kalashnikov shot from the school startled us all. A terrorist had spotted a Golani soldier, who at his own initiative had climbed the town’s water tower for a better view. Thinking the soldier was a sniper, the terrorist fired. The soldier was killed on the spot and fell to the ground. For a long stretch of silence, the tension grew until the translator explained to the terrorist that he killed a soldier on home leave for the weekend. The poor soldier was probably the only one in the area not under orders to stay out of sight.
We presented our plan to Raful at eleven, and began moving into position, figuring the whole thing could be over by noon if the snipers got two terrorists in their sights. Meanwhile, the terrorists doubled their efforts to stay out of sight.
And Motta began to have second thoughts about a military solution. Dayan called Jerusalem.
In the apartment he used as a field headquarters, I remember hearing his voice and turning to watch his face as he spoke with the prime minister. “Golda,” he said. “I’m in the field and have seen the forces. They are ready to break in.” Moshe’s face did not change as he listened to what she said to him.
But I saw the twitch of Dayan’s brow over the eyepatch when Motta asked for the phone to speak with the prime minister. It never could have happened before Yom Kippur, when Dayan reigned supreme as the ultimate military authority in Israel. The war had taken its toll. Dayan handed the phone to the new chief of staff.
“This is Motta,” the chief of staff began. “I’m also in the field, but I recommended continuing the negotiations.”
A short silence followed. She must have asked him a question, I realized. “I think it is too big a risk,” Motta said. “At least right now.”
Furious, Dayan decided to fly to Jerusalem to explain the situation to the government. Time is against us, he would tell them. Night would begin falling at five, and in the dark, the situation becomes much more dangerous.
While Dayan choppered to Jerusalem, the terrorists released a hostage — one o
f the last three adults left among the kids, a teacher. She came out with a letter. But nobody paid any attention to the terrorists’ message. I heard that the French ambassador showed up to mediate, if not negotiate, but nobody gave him access to the chief of staff. But the teacher’s release gave us some more intelligence. The three terrorists “have rifles like yours,” she said, pointing to my Kalashnikov. “And hand grenades. And they set up boxes with wires and explosives.”
“What about the kids?” I asked, thinking of the water faucet in Hadera all those years ago.
She shivered, clutching a coffee cup with both hands. “Everyone is frightened, on the floor, panicked.” It dashed my remaining hopes the hostages might take the initiative and overcome the terrorists.
The snipers stayed in position all the hours we waited for the okay from Jerusalem. Sometimes they had a view of the terrorist in the classroom, whom I planned to take with my team through the window. Others watched the terrorist on the balcony. But never again that day did all three terrorists enter the snipers’ sights at the same time.
Five o’clock remained our final deadline. Minutes, then hours, ticked by, and the tension grew while the government deliberated. Giving in to the terrorists’ demands would open a Pandora’s box much more difficult to close than open. But Dayan could not promise a casualty-free operation.
Meanwhile, like overwound springs, my squad waited with a long ladder around the corner of the building, a blind spot to the terrorist’s view. I put Micki first, Max second, and I went third. Amiram Levine’s main assault force meanwhile crawled into place, ready to make the dash for the school door and up the stairs to the second floor.
Dayan finally returned to Ma’alot, and we waited for the ministers in Jerusalem to decide. The waiting became torture. Finally, just before five, we got the okay. Giora told the snipers to fire when ready. Now we waited for their shots to set the entire operation into motion.
No more than five seconds could pass from the time the snipers first fired to when we should be up the ladder and in the classroom window. By then, Amiram’s team should be on the second floor, breaking into the classrooms. We waited for the snap of the snipers’ shots while the seconds ticked by and the light began changing in the final minutes of daytime.
Suddenly, Giora’s “Fire” came over the radio. Gunshots cracked. “Move!” I ordered, and we threw the ladder up against the wall, unaware that the snipers had only wounded the terrorist on the porch — and he managed to crawl back inside the classroom, to warn the others.
A massive cacophony of shooting and explosions and screaming burst out of the window along with shattered glass. We ignored the flying shards, racing up the ladder, while children leapt from the shattered window above, trying to escape the mayhem.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw an elderly man running from the woods nearby to help the shrapnel-wounded kids lying on the ground, their legs broken from the two-story jump. The seconds flew by as Micki scrambled up, followed by Max and me. Just as Micki reached the last rungs of the ladder, a grenade flew out the window.
“Grenade on the right!” I shouted. The three of us instinctively jumped off the ladder to the left, away from the grenade. We never managed to get off a single shot. Raising our heads after the grenade’s explosion, I saw the elderly man fall, wounded by shrapnel in the back. He lived another five years, paralyzed from the waist down.
Back on our feet, we knew we had lost the time to get to the window before Amiram’s crew arrived. “To the main entrance,” I ordered, and the three of us ran around the corner to the doorway, up the stairs to the second floor.
The acrid stench of a smoke grenade hung in the air. I knew we faced disaster, but did not know its horrible extent — until I entered the first classroom, a scene from my worst nightmare.
The terrorists had crammed eighty-five kids into a room usually overcrowded with forty. The terrorists sprayed the kids with Kalashnikov bullets and exploded grenades in their midst. Dozens lay on the floor, piled on top of each other where they fell, wounded or dead. In the corner, a terrorist lay dead on top of a detonator. Luckily, he died before using it. The explosives could have brought down the building. The shooting over, chaos reigned. Dozens of wounded, frightened children screamed for help. Others shivered in shock. Out of the whole group, eighteen died on the spot (three more died later in the hospital) and fifty suffered wounds ranging from light to serious. Only a handful of the kids escaped without harm.
Medical crews ran in after us, to evacuate the wounded. Stunned by the gruesome scene, we helped load wounded onto stretchers. Dayan, Motta Gur, and Raful came into the chaos and confusion of the evacuation. Just as they entered the room, Shai, an officer from the Unit, shouted, “Terrorist!”
I turned. From amidst the broken bodies of dead children, a teenager in an IDF uniform stood up, fumbling with a Kalashnikov. He was wounded but must have hid among the kids when the shooting began, I realized.
He swung the barrel up, aimed in the direction of Dayan and Raful. I pulled the trigger on my own Kalashnikov, letting off a short burst that threw him backward, killing him instantly.
Moshe glanced at me and barely nodded, like all of us too horrified by the disaster to comment.
On the spot, we field a preliminary debriefing, listing all our mistakes. It began with the sniper hitting the terrorist on the porch in the chest instead of the head. His crew commander made a terrible mistake, whispering a last minute word to the shooter. “It’s up to you,” he told the sniper. “The responsibility for all those children is on you, so make sure you hit.” Feeling the pressure, the sniper went for the sure shot to the chest rather than the riskier one to the head.
But the sniper’s mistake only started a chain of events that included many other mistakes. Amiram’s force, running up the stairs, went a flight past the second floor of the building, reaching the third floor. Retracing their steps, they made another mistake when someone threw a phosphorous grenade, filling the corridors with smoke and making visibility impossible, losing more precious seconds. Eventually, one of Amiram’s fighters spotted a terrorist through the smoke and managed to kill him.
It was a national tragedy. I believed that in addition to all our mistakes, the government’s hesitancy lay behind the failure. Their hesitation in fulfilling a policy of no negotiations with terrorists proved costly.
An inquiry into the events, headed by Amos Horev, a reserve general from the general staff that won the Six-Day War, turned out like the Agranat Commission that exonerated Dayan and Golda from responsibility for the Yom Kippur War.
But at least his report established a policy giving the three regional command generals — Northern, Southern, and Central — the authority to okay a military solution in the field without waiting for a government decision.
We felt that when Dayan gave his okay in the morning we could have done it properly. But that did not free us from responsibility to learn from the tragedy, the only balm for the pain we felt.
We analyzed each step of the operation and it all led back to the bloodied room on the second floor where we field the first impromptu debriefing and counted our mistakes. Into our new doctrine for hostage situations went a string of lessons for future incidents.
The day after Ma’alot, Raful ordered the Unit’s commanders to his office in the Northern Command for a briefing. Raful listened, but already knew what he wanted to say. “Maybe you know how to fight and conduct special missions and night raids. But when push comes to shove, I should have used the Golani forces and let them do it right away. As long as I’m in charge here, you guys can stay out of the Northern Command.”
A few weeks later, Golda and Dayan finally left office. Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister in the summer of 1974. Shimon Peres became defense minister.
And Sayeret Matkal received orders to redouble our efforts in preparing a full-scale doctrine for counterterrorism in hostage situations. To help, the army gave us authority to recruit forty more soldie
rs.
The recruits learned a whole new set of skills and tools. They learned to break into a room crowded with hostages, identify the terrorists, and selectively shoot to kill terrorists while avoiding hostages. The specialized teams learned how to take over houses, apartment buildings, ships, trains, planes, buses — any target that terrorists might capture. Every type of structure needed its own doctrine regarding entry, firepower, adequate numbers of teams. Ladders became an obsession for us. We developed easily transportable folding ladders, and invented special ladders for traversing from one building to the next. I called my best fighters on these ladders “the monkey crews,” for they seemed to move up the ladders as quickly as the tree-climbing monkeys I used to see in Uganda.
Extraordinary skills are required for these operations, and every member of Sayeret Matkal needed to learn those skills. Though one officer took charge of the overall training, all the officers, both regulars and reserves, became involved in developing the doctrines and methods. We constantly practiced on models and real targets, from planes and trains to houses and apartments. Basic methodologies for snipers, communication networks, sabotage substances, and combat means needed to be developed. In quite a short time we put together a doctrine, which we kept improving all the time and the Unit continues to improve to this day.
Officially still a civilian on leave without pay, as always I remained on call for any emergency that came up, and a few weeks after Ma’alot came Bet Shean.
This time they caught me at home, before I left for work. Hilla Elazar, Dado’s daughter and a secretary at the Unit, called, catching me in the kitchen, making coffee. “Muki, there’s an incident in Bet Shean,” she said.
After Ma’alot, I added a street atlas for all the towns and cities of Israel to the emergency supplies I kept in my car. I turned on the radio as I sped out of Nahalal. The news broadcast named the street where the terrorists had attacked. I quickly located the street in the atlas and sped to the town. Bet Shean is a few miles down the Jezreel Valley Road from Nahalal.
