Epstein Secrets

er 1939, the Germans, and then the Soviets, invaded, overran and divided Poland. Two of my mother’s three sisters fled to Moscow. Her teenage brother Avraham went underground, joining the anti-Nazi partisans. All three would survive the war. Yet in the autumn of 1940, the rest of her family found themselve

he early 1960s, there were only two of note. One was Sayeret Golani, attached to the Golani Brigade near the northern border. The truly elite one was Sayeret Tzanhanim, the paratroopers’ sayeret. It had been built from Company A of Battalion 890, where Yigal had served in the 1950s. “Which sayeret?” I asked. “It’s

er 1939, the Germans, and then the Soviets, invaded, overran and divided Poland. Two of my mother’s three sisters fled to Moscow. Her teenage brother Avraham went underground, joining the anti-Nazi partisans. All three would survive the war. Yet in the autumn of 1940, the rest of her family found themselve

he early 1960s, there were only two of note. One was Sayeret Golani, attached to the Golani Brigade near the northern border. The truly elite one was Sayeret Tzanhanim, the paratroopers’ sayeret. It had been built from Company A of Battalion 890, where Yigal had served in the 1950s. “Which sayeret?” I asked. “It’s

have to broaden its reach, moving beyond the kind of intelligence operations we'd done before the 1967 war to become the SAS-like special forces unit Avraham ultimately envisaged. But that was not 104 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_027952 going to happen soon, if only because the intelligence missions now required were

Other Israeli sayerets were attached to specific fighting forces. Sayeret Golan, for instance, was part of the Golani infantry brigade in the north; Sayeret Tzanhanim, was part of the paratroopers. But "matkal" is the Hebrew word for the general staff, since it was the generals in military headquarters who had allo