Epstein Secrets

Amir Drori, the head of the northern command. They had set up a rooftop observation post just a few hundred yards in from where I had landed with my Sayeret Matkal team a decade earlier for the Rue Verdun operation. It overlooked a pair of Palestinian refugee camps: Sabra and, a couple of hundred yards closer to

tment to the values of an open, tolerant democracy. But in at least one important way, I approached my new role as if it was one of our operations in Sayeret Matkal, or the need to reshape our armed forces when I was chief-of-staff. My first priority was to put in place the practical foundations for a successful

ion about our enemies, and make sure it got to the commanders and field units that needed it. And while the details of many operations I approved for Sayeret Matkal and other units remain classified, we did succeed in doing that — to take just one example, by finding an entirely new way to get intelligence from i

iled in Israel at about 2 a.m. on January 18, 1991, almost exactly 24 hours after the Americans began their bombing raids over Baghdad. I was home in Kochav Yair. Like other Israelis, we’d set up a sealed shelter. Though I felt a bit silly doing it, having assured the government Saddam was vanishingly unlikely

he summit’s collapse. My main concern was the possibility of violence. Even before returning home, I’d phoned Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dichter, the former Sayeret Matkal officer who was now head of the Shin Bet. “Let’s hope the violence doesn’t come,” I told them. “But if it does, make sure we are ready.” Though there

eer by training, he was a reserve army general who, when I was chief of staff, had been in charge of the logistics branch of the military. I gave him Sayeret Matkal backup as well, in the person of Danny Yatom, my longtime friend and former sayeret deputy. But all that was process. Winning or losing would come d

gn team. This wasn’t just because I wanted to guard against complacency. It was because, deep down, still I didn’t trust the numbers. I retreated to Kochav Yair on Friday evening. On Saturday, two days before the election, I had a surprise visitor, someone I knew from Yitzhik Mordecai’s team. He said he had a

ERSIGHT_011813 / BARAK / 57 A few days later, the “pre-endgame” around the summit began. Not in Washington or Jerusalem or Ramallah or Gaza, but in Kochav Yair. Nava and I still spent almost all our weekends there. We valued the quiet, or at least the slightly quieter, time away from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. S

Amir Drori, the head of the northern command. They had set up a rooftop observation post just a few hundred yards in from where I had landed with my Sayeret Matkal team a decade earlier for the Rue Verdun operation. It overlooked a pair of Palestinian refugee camps: Sabra and, a couple of hundred yards closer to

tment to the values of an open, tolerant democracy. But in at least one important way, I approached my new role as if it was one of our operations in Sayeret Matkal, or the need to reshape our armed forces when I was chief-of-staff. My first priority was to put in place the practical foundations for a successful

ion about our enemies, and make sure it got to the commanders and field units that needed it. And while the details of many operations I approved for Sayeret Matkal and other units remain classified, we did succeed in doing that - to take just one example, by finding an entirely new way to get intelligence from i

iled in Israel at about 2 a.m. on January 18, 1991, almost exactly 24 hours after the Americans began their bombing raids over Baghdad. I was home in Kochav Yair. Like other Israelis, we'd set up a sealed shelter. Though I felt a bit silly doing it, having assured the government Saddam was vanishingly unlikely

he summit's collapse. My main concern was the possibility of violence. Even before returning home, I'd phoned Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dichter, the former Sayeret Matkal officer who was now head of the Shin Bet. "Let's hope the violence doesn't come," I told them. "But if it does, make sure we are ready." Though there

eer by training, he was a reserve army general who, when I was chief of staff, had been in charge of the logistics branch of the military. I gave him Sayeret Matkal backup as well, in the person of Danny Yatom, my longtime friend and former sayeret deputy. *** But all that was process. Winning or losing would com

ign team. This wasn't just because I wanted to guard against complacency. It was because, deep down, still I didn't trust the numbers. I retreated to Kochav Yair on Friday evening. On Saturday, two days before the election, I had a surprise visitor, someone I knew from Yitzhik Mordecai's team. He said he had a

VERSIGHT_028190 / BARAK / 57 A few days later, the "pre-endgame" around the summit began. Not in Washington or Jerusalem or Ramallah or Gaza, but in Kochav Yair. Nava and I still spent almost all our weekends there. We valued the quiet, or at least the slightly quieter, time away from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. S