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“We’re not starting from scratch,” I assured the sayeret officers, and I could see some of them nodding in agreement. We had a proven record of success, under Avraham and the four other commanders before me. We would be able to rely on the qualities that had proved our doubters wrong in our first intelligence missions. “We have to stay true to the spirit of Sayeret Matkal,” I said. Every one of the officers knew what I meant: teamwork, the way we valued brains and creativity, more than formal lines of authority. The rigor we applied to training for, preparing for, and executing each mission. And, no less importantly, to criticizing, and trying to fix, everything that had gone wrong on an operation, or we’d failed to anticipate.

Though I expected to be leading many of the operations myself, I knew that we’d succeed or fail on the strengths of the officers around me. I was incredibly fortunate on that score. Some, I already knew well from my time as Digli’s deputy. Smart, self-confident, self-starting officers like Amiram Levin, the stocky kibbutznik from the north with whom I’d worked most closely and most often as deputy. Avshalom Horan – Avsha – who’d convinced me to risk completing the mission on the road from Suez to Cairo. Giora Zorea, who, like me, had come up through the unit and was one of our most experienced team leaders. And Danny Yatom. Born not far from Mishmar Hasharon, but a city boy, from Netanya, he was smart, level-headed and a sure-handed organizer, and with whom I’d somehow clicked from time he arrived in the sayeret. I made him my deputy for my first year in command.

There were two others as well, both related to Moshe Dayan, but with a self-assurance all their own: Uzi Dayan, the son of Moshe’s brother, who had been killed in the 1948 war when Uzi was only months old; and Mookie Betzer, who was married to Uzi’s cousin. I’m not sure which of the two joined the sayeret first. Mookie, I believe. But their family ties, far from extraordinary, were part of how Sayeret Matkal had developed from the start. It had been friends bringing friends. But also, not infrequently, a cousin bringing a cousin, or a brother bringing a brother.

This was the case with two other officers, whom I knew less well at first but who would become key members of my team. In their case, it was the younger one who joined first. Binyamin Netanyahu – Bibi, as everyone called him – had been a member of Amiram Levin’s team when I was Digli’s deputy. He’d also been a part of one of our several – thankfully harmless – failures along the canal at the beginning of the War of Attrition. The plan was to cross in rubber boats held together by nylon cord, with the assistance of Shayetet 13, Israel’s

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