Epstein Secrets

le undeniably risky, seemed to me to have every chance of success. It was to abduct a number of Syrians from an officers’ club on the western edge of Damascus. We would land in transport helicopters a few miles away and unload a pair of armored cars captured in 1967. But Raful’s view prevailed. I could not

Nili. Her parental home was in Tiberias. Her parents were from old Sephardi families, with a centuries-long history in Palestine, and were also solid Ben-Gurion Labor supporters. Her father had fought in the British army in the Second World War. He now ran the branch of Bank Leumi in Tiberias. Her mother ran

f in a fierce firefight with the Syrians, and lost eleven men. We were now just three hours from the cease-fire. We did advance nearer to the Beirut-Damascus road. An hour before noon, our dedicated anti-tank unit destroyed 20 of Assad’s top-tier tanks, Soviet-made T-72s. Under different circumstances, tho

res might bring Labor back to power. There was no prospect he’d win an outright majority in the 120-seat Knesset. No one had ever done that, not even Ben-Gurion in his political heyday. From 1948, Israel’s political landscape had been populated by at least a dozen-or-so parties, mostly a reflection of the var

n to grant us explicit recognition as a Jewish state when we made peace with them. Even when Bibi himself had briefly tried to open negotiations with Damascus in his first period as Prime Minister, we’d never felt the need to ask it of the Syrians either. To the extent there was any logic in demanding it of

tructure, the economy, the internal security and the stability needed for an eventual state to succeed. He was trying to do for the Palestinians what Ben-Gurion had done before 1948. He and I met and talked often but discreetly — sometimes in his office in Ramallah, sometimes in mine, sometimes over dinner in

le undeniably risky, seemed to me to have every chance of success. It was to abduct a number of Syrians from an officers' club on the western edge of Damascus. We would land in transport helicopters a few miles away and unload a pair of armored cars captured in 1967. But Raful's view prevailed. I could not

Nili. Her parental home was in Tiberias. Her parents were from old Sephardi families, with a centuries-long history in Palestine, and were also solid Ben-Gurion Labor supporters. Her father had fought in the British army in the Second World War. He now ran the branch of Bank Leumi in Tiberias. Her mother ran

lf in a fierce firefight with the Syrians, and lost eleven men. We were now just three hours from the cease-fire. We did advance nearer to the Beirut-Damascus road. An hour before noon, our dedicated anti-tank unit destroyed 20 of Assad's top-tier tanks, Soviet-made T-72s. Under different circumstances, tho

res might bring Labor back to power. There was no prospect he'd win an outright majority in the 120-seat Knesset. No one had ever done that, not even Ben-Gurion in his political heyday. From 1948, Israel's political landscape had been populated by at least a dozen-or-so parties, mostly a reflection of the var

n to grant us explicit recognition as a Jewish state when we made peace with them. Even when Bibi himself had briefly tried to open negotiations with Damascus in his first period as Prime Minister, we'd never felt the need to ask it of the Syrians either. To the extent there was any logic in demanding it of

tructure, the economy, the internal security and the stability needed for an eventual state to succeed. He was trying to do for the Palestinians what Ben-Gurion had done before 1948. He and I met and talked often but discreetly - sometimes in his office in Ramallah, sometimes in mine, sometimes over dinner in