There were days, though, when Dagan never went home. Late-night meetings turned into secure calls with time zones seven hours behind and five hours ahead. Aides sometimes found him at work at his desk at three in the morning reading pages, making notes, and humming Russian folk tunes that had been coopted into Hebrew; he was transfixed by classical

“Putin trusted Dagan,” one of the Israeli spy chief’s deputies explained. “Politicians could lie, it was part of their game, but those in the intelligence business knew who could be counted on. Dagan’s word was good as gold. And the Russian president knew it.”6

It took a combined force of Dagan’s brigade and battalions of infantrymen and paratroopers nineteen hours to neutralize Kfar Sil’s main street. A tank commander in Major Ben-Reuven’s 71st Battalion called the fighting pure hell; wherever an Israeli tank appeared in the open, whenever a Golani infantryman raised his head, the Syrians unleashed

mirrored his thought process and personality. He had heard accounts of a young paratroop officer of boundless courage and wanted to meet him. In February 1970, Meir suffered a debilitating wound that should have ended his military career. His jeep struck a land mine8 planted on a sandy stretch of road near El Arish by Egyptian commandos. Meir had

And Hezbollah’s hierarchy realized that it had made a fatal mistake in launching the war. “We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude,” Nasrallah told Lebanon’s New TV channel. “If I had known on July 11 that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely

At home, Shmuel was dismissive and distant to his two sons. Bitter that his efforts in Poland on behalf of Hashomer Ha’Tzair were never appreciated or rewarded upon his arrival in Israel, with a position in government or at an agency that had prominence and brought financial reward to him, Shmuel Huberman carried that slight with him for the rest

The other Palestinian factions in Gaza operated from smaller arsenals. The PFLP had to build a complete weapons armaments acquisition supply chain. Some weapons were purchased from Bedouins in the Sinai Desert who rummaged the battlefield of 1967 in search of whatever would fetch a top price, but Israeli intelligence manipulated many of these

The young Mughniyeh was obsessed with guns, and when Palestinian guerrillas took over parts of southern Lebanon after they were kicked out of Jordan in 1971, the young boy became enamored of the swagger and muscle of the Palestinian fedayeen, even though they abused the Shiite villagers. The reports of raped women, and husbands and fathers

Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud became the Saudi point man for covert discussions with Israeli intelligence.9 He was rare among the Saudis, especially only five years after fifteen of his countrymen had been among the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, in that he embodied pragmatic moderation. He was as comfortable playing hardball with a senator as he