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The day before the end of basic training, I was told to return to Maka Esser.
A Jeep was waiting. A soldier was at the wheel. He mumbled hello and drove
me to a sprawling military base about 15 minutes away, not too far from the
international airport in Lod. It was built by the British in the Second World War
for the RAF. After 1948, the main part had been converted into Israel’s officer-
training school. But at the far end, set back from a criss-cross of runways, was a
pair of domed concrete shelters which had been used by the British for
munitions storage. Five tents. Two field toilets. And a single-story brick
structure with a tin roof. It contained offices for Avraham Arnan, a couple of
other officers and a secretary, a kitchenette and a room for storing weapons.
This was the home of Sayeret Matkal, although the first thing I was told was
that no one, outside a handful of senior officers in military headquarters, knew
we existed.

* * *

The heart and soul of Sayeret Matkal was Avraham Arnan. Even from my
brief first encounter with him in his living room in Tzahala, I was struck by his
physical presence, with almost movie-star looks and a face made even more
intriguing by the fact he had different-colored eyes, one brown and one a
piercing green. But what really set him apart, as I got to know him and come
under his spell in the sayeret, was his playful, almost bohemian disregard for the
normal strictures and structures, rules and regulations, of the armed forces.
What mattered to him was what actually needed to get done, and how best to
accomplish it despite all the bureaucratic obstacles, and he made me and his
other teenage recruits feel we were equal partners with him in getting there.

Years later, he confided that if his life had not led him into the military, he
would have probably chosen something in the arts or culture, maybe directing
films. But he had volunteered for the Haganah at age 17, a year before the 1948
war. As the losses mounted in Jerusalem, he found himself in the Palmach’s
crack Harel Brigade, under the command of a future Israeli chief-of-staff, Dado
Elazar.

His vision for Sayeret Matkal became Israel’s answer to the dangers
identified by Rotem. But it had its origins in his experiences in the years after
1948, when he joined a military intelligence group running a loose network of
Arab agents across Israel’s northern border. They provided occasional bits of

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