With the growing threat of terrorism, the kirya had drawn up a list of installations that might be targeted. Next to each, they’d put the name of the military unit to be called up in an emergency. We’d been allocated Lod Airport because our base was closer than other units. As I accompanied the engineer back to the control tower, I tried to work

That task fell to Britain’s SAS, and its operation was almost exactly what we’d planned. A force of nearly 700 commandos was helicoptered in to Iraq’s western desert. They were equipped with Land Rovers, and armed with anti-tank missiles and laser targeting capability. They could also call in attack helicopters and F-15 jets if necessary. Still,

We struck just after midnight, in an intricately coordinated air raid that evaded not only a Syrian response, but Syrian notice. The reactor was destroyed. Although even today some details remain subject to Israel’s military secrecy regulations, accounts published abroad in the weeks and months that followed painted an accurate picture.

The frustration we felt on the first morning of the war was not because we were itching to fight, for the hell of it. But even on the first day of the war, it was clear this would be by far the most consequential conflict in our country’s history. There was no mission for Sayeret Matkal, nor, it seemed, any prospect of our playing any significant

I called Danny Yatom and told him to get whoever was at the sayeret base to Lod as soon as possible. But most of the men were on training exercises, including one team with Yoni deep in the Negev Desert.

Within days, I replaced him as defense minister as well. The main item in my in-box would not be Lebanon, however. The Mossad had uncovered a threat hundreds of miles farther away: a construction site in northeast Syria along the Euphrates River, where the Syrians, with technical help from North Korea and funding from Iran, were building a nuclear

The question was how and when to strike. Olmert wanted to attack within a few weeks at most. I understood the reasons for his sense of urgency. We obviously had to act before the reactor became operational. In addition, there was always the risk the Syrians would find out that we were aware of their nuclear facility and put their forces on higher

I was sitting down to dinner with Nava a little before seven on May 8, 1972, when the phone rang.

None of us had trained on them. But many of the air marshals on board all El Al flights were Sayeret