Epstein Secrets

to an Arab country, where we’d be powerless to act. Though only a handful of my men had arrived, I took the only officer who had, Shai Agmon, and an El Al engineer to see whether we could disable the hijacked jet. It was parked well off from the main terminal area. With the El Al man leading the way, we

nd in the Sinai. Without any advance call-up, many reservists were only now reaching the front lines. As hundreds of people pressed for seats on the El Al flight, I was fortunate to receive a boost up the pecking order from another man in line. Since the Sabena operation, the existence of Sayeret Matkal

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

I, with a couple of other young soldiers and engineers, had come up with what we dubbed the “submarine door” system outside the cockpit — to protect El Al pilots from future attacks after one of its planes had been hijacked to Algiers in the summer of 1968. It was also the same kind of plane — a Sabena

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

I, with a couple of other young soldiers and engineers, had come up with what we dubbed the “submarine door” system outside the cockpit — to protect El Al pilots from future attacks after one of its planes had been hijacked to Algiers in the summer of 1968. It was also the same kind of plane — a Sabena

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