Epstein Secrets

ted plan — a raid by helicopter into a Fatah-dominated area in southeastern Lebanon, during one of Arafat’s intermittent, morale-boosting visits from Beirut — to assassinate him. My immediate superior, the army’s head of operations, was all for our doing it. But the chief of military intelligence said no.

ter under Shimon Peres. But in the intervening years, Arafat was rarely off of my radar. By the early 1970s, he and his fighters had been expelled by King Hussein’s army from Jordan and were re-based in Lebanon. Arafat was becoming a significant figure on the Arab and world political stage, and an increasingly un

te within a state” and deliberately weakening his government. Now, they were doing much the same in Lebanon. Their headquarters buildings in southern Beirut were spawning hiyackings or terror attacks. From bases in southern Lebanon, the Palestinians were also firing Katyusha rockets into Israel. One of t

need for a special-forces unit was becoming increasingly hard to ignore. By the summer of 1971, a couple of months after I became sayeret commander, King Hussein’s army had defeated the insurgency of Fatah and a pair of even more militant partners, the Democratic Front and the Popular Front for the Liberation of

ted plan — a raid by helicopter into a Fatah-dominated area in southeastern Lebanon, during one of Arafat’s intermittent, morale-boosting visits from Beirut — to assassinate him. My immediate superior, the army’s head of operations, was all for our doing it. But the chief of military intelligence said no.

ter under Shimon Peres. But in the intervening years, Arafat was rarely off of my radar. By the early 1970s, he and his fighters had been expelled by King Hussein’s army from Jordan and were re-based in Lebanon. Arafat was becoming a significant figure on the Arab and world political stage, and an increasingly un