HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027964.jpg

* * *

I was sitting down to dinner with Nava a little before seven on May 8, 1972
when the phone rang. We’d just fed Michael, who was almost two, full of
energy, and showed no sign of wanting to go to bed. “It’s Manno,” said the
voice on the line. Brigadier General Emanuel “Manno” Shaked was Dado’s
chief of operations. “A plane has been hijacked,” he said. “It’s heading for Lod.
It will land in about 30 minutes. They’ve got hostages. Get to the airport. Dado
and Dayan are on their way.”

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. He immediately began
calling them back. When I got to the airport, I found Dayan and Dado huddling
in a room below the control tower, unfurnished except for a small table in the
corner. Talik was there with them. He was now head of all military operations
in the kirya. Rechavam Ze’evi as well, the head of the central command area,
which included Tel Aviv. So was Ahrahle Yariv, who had succeeded Meir Amit
as head of military intelligence, and nodded glumly as I joined them.

The plane had landed. A Sabena Boeing 707 bound from Brussels to Tel
Aviv, it had been hijacked after a stopover in Vienna. All we knew at this point
was that the hijackers were Palestinians and that there were about a hundred
passengers on board. Dado said that, while we figured out how to respond, we
had to make sure, at all costs, the plane didn’t take off again. It would
presumably go to an Arab country, where we’d be powerless to act. Though
only a handful of my men had arrived, I took the only officer who had, Shai
Agmon, and an El Al engineer to see whether we could disable the hijacked jet.
It was parked well off from the main terminal area. With the El Al man leading
the way, we approached from the rear, crouching low, hoping the hijackers
wouldn’t spot us. The engines were still running, but at least the deafening noise
kept anyone from hearing us as we ducked under the fuselage and the engineer
removed a stabilizing pin from the front wheel. It was an eerie feeling,
envisaging the captive crew and passengers, and the terrorists, a few feet above
our heads but knowing we were powerless to do anything more to help.

Manno had called me not because I’d won my argument to expand the role
of the sayeret. It was the luck of the draw. With the growing threat of terrorism,
the kirya had drawn up a list of installations which might be targeted. Next to

116
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027964