Epstein Secrets

cially upset. This was one of the last operations during his period in command of the unit. He was about to hand over to a veteran paratroop officer, Uzi Yairi. Yet our aborted Sinai mission turned out not to matter. What saved our eavesdropping network was the very thing which I was confident would not hap

ground on every issue we possibly could, without facing full-scale political rebellion at home. We had proposed an Israeli pullout from nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza. A support mechanism for helping compensate tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the serial Arab-Israeli conflicts of the past hal

n more radical factions within the PLO were ready to step into the breach if Arafat faltered. Israel needed to find an answer for all these threats. Uzi Yairi’s term as Sayeret Matkal commander had by now ended, but his successor was someone I knew well. Menachem Digli was the officer on whom I’d bestowed m

early a thousand men just across the Jordan River, in a town called Karameh. From early 1968, they had been launching hit- and-run raids, not just on the West Bank but into the Negev. Eshkol’s cabinet was initially divided on whether to attack his base in Jordan, in both an act of retaliation and a signal to Kin

earlier than usual, to visit the graves of the men who had lost their lives in my battalion in the Yom Kippur War. I also went to pay my respects to Uzi Yairi, killed when he’d rushed from his desk in the kiryva to join the Sayeret Matkal attack at the Savoy Hotel. Then Nava and I drove to Jerusalem. At Isr

would be in charge of one of Israel’s three regional military commands, and we were based on the edge of Jerusalem, with security responsibility for the West Bank. This was my first direct exposure to the combustible mix of restive Palestinians and the growing number of Jewish settlers. Our main brief was to p

cially upset. This was one of the last operations during his period in command of the unit. He was about to hand over to a veteran paratroop officer, Uzi Yairi. Yet our aborted Sinai mission turned out not to matter. What saved our eavesdropping network was the very thing which I was confident would not happ

ground on every issue we possibly could, without facing full-scale political rebellion at home. We had proposed an Israeli pullout from nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza. A support mechanism for helping compensate tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the serial Arab-Israeli conflicts of the past hal

earlier than usual, to visit the graves of the men who had lost their lives in my battalion in the Yom Kippur War. I also went to pay my respects to Uzi Yairi, killed when he'd rushed from his desk in the kirya to join the Sayeret Matkal attack at the Savoy Hotel. Then Nava and I drove to Jerusalem. At Isra

would be in charge of one of Israel's three regional military commands, and we were based on the edge of Jerusalem, with security responsibility for the West Bank. This was my first direct exposure to the combustible mix of restive Palestinians and the growing number of Jewish settlers. Our main brief was to pr