Epstein Secrets

ill alive?” He looked first at Raful, then at me, and added: “When I was 20 years younger than you are, I never waited for someone like Ben-Gurion or Dayan to ask me to plan an operation. I would plan it! Then I’d take it to them and say, you’re the politicians, you decide, but if you say yes, we'll do i

ldiers crossed the border on an intelligence mission. It had happened in 1954, and it ended in a failure even more serious than Rotem. The target was the Golan Heights, inside Syria. The special technology unit attached to military intelligence had developed a bugging device designed to be placed on a telephone pole

ns. “A plane has been hijacked,” he said. “It’s heading for Lod. It will land in about 30 minutes. They’ve got hostages. Get to the airport. Dado and Dayan are on their way.” I called Danny Yatom and told him to get whoever was at the sayeret base to Lod as soon as possible. But most of the men were on

urprise attacks by Syria and Egypt — armies we’d not just defeated, but humiliated, six years earlier — had pinned down and pushed back our forces on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai. Without any advance call-up, many reservists were only now reaching the front lines. As hundreds of people pressed for seats on th

ndable. I was by no means the only former general to enter Israeli politics. Other chiefs-of-staff had gone on to play prominent roles in government: Dayan, Motta Gur and, of course, Rabin. But the fact that I was going directly into the cabinet, and so soon after leaving the army, was seen by the Israel

ade with him. The substance in any agreement, though politically difficult, was also more straightforward. We knew what Assad wanted: the recovery of the Golan Heights, in return for the absolute minimum level of political normalization with Israel. We knew what we wanted: security guarantees and assurances regardin

ill alive?” He looked first at Raful, then at me, and added: “When I was 20 years younger than you are, I never waited for someone like Ben-Gurion or Dayan to ask me to plan an operation. I would plan it! Then I’d take it to them and say, you’re the politicians, you decide, but if you say yes, we'll do i

ldiers crossed the border on an intelligence mission. It had happened in 1954, and it ended in a failure even more serious than Rotem. The target was the Golan Heights, inside Syria. The special technology unit attached to military intelligence had developed a bugging device designed to be placed on a telephone pole

ns. "A plane has been hijacked," he said. "It's heading for Lod. It will land in about 30 minutes. They've got hostages. Get to the airport. Dado and Dayan are on their way." I called Danny Yatom and told him to get whoever was at the sayeret base to Lod as soon as possible. But most of the men were on t

urprise attacks by Syria and Egypt - armies we'd not just defeated, but humiliated, six years earlier - had pinned down and pushed back our forces on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai. Without any advance call-up, many reservists were only now reaching the front lines. As hundreds of people pressed for seats on the

ndable. I was by no means the only former general to enter Israeli politics. Other chiefs-of-staff had gone on to play prominent roles in government: Dayan, Motta Gur and, of course, Rabin. But the fact that I was going directly into the cabinet, and so soon after leaving the army, was seen by the Israel

ade with him. The substance in any agreement, though politically difficult, was also more straightforward. We knew what Assad wanted: the recovery of the Golan Heights, in return for the absolute minimum level of political normalization with Israel. We knew what we wanted: security guarantees and assurances regardin