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to adapt on the ground. And obviously pleased that we’d found a way to make the operation work.

The Sinai mission marked a transition not just for me, but for others in Sayeret Matkal as well. Avraham Aranan finally left the unit he’d imagined, created and built. He became the head of the technology unit in military intelligence. His deputy, Dovik Tamari, succeeded him, serving the first in what would become two-year stints for each of his successors as the sayeret’s commander. I, too, was given a wider role. Though I was still just a young lieutenant, and too junior for the job, Dovik made me his de facto deputy, with responsibility for operational oversight of our missions. I returned to the Sinai a year later, not in that capacity but because of my on-the-ground experience, to accompany a sayeret team which installed an intercept on a second Egyptian communications cable.

Though the tzalash was gratifying, what gave me more satisfaction, and pride, was the importance of the Sinai operations themselves. I was confident that if we did have to go to war again, the equipment we installed, along with the bugs on the Golan, would give us an essential edge. But in truth, I didn’t actually believe there would be another war. Sure, the threat was still there. Egypt, in particular, still seemed determined to find a way to hobble, and if possible eliminate, Israel. But especially since the 1956 war, the fedayeen attacks, and cross-border skirmishes, had been subsiding. Not long after the second Sinai intercept mission, I was chatting with other officers on the sayeret base and remember turning to one of them and saying I was sure that by the time I was married and had a teenage child, we’d be able to take a skiing holiday in Lebanon. We didn’t have peace yet. That might take time. But I felt that things were getting more normal.

I began thinking what that would mean not just for Sayeret Matkal or Israel, but for my own future. By the autumn of 1964, I’d reached a decision: to end my active service in the unit that had been central to my life since leaving the kibbutz. Dovik did persuade me to delay, for nearly a year. But at the end of the summer of 1965, I left Sayeret Matkal. In fact, I left the army altogether. I went to study mathematics and physics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I would remain involved in the sayeret as a reservist. But I couldn’t see devoting my adult life to military service in a country which, fortunately, seemed on a trajectory toward peace. I had spent five years in an extraordinary unit. It had been more fascinating and fulfilling than I could have dreamed of when I’d

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