No Mission Is Impossible (19 page)

When the odd couple—Ehud Barak and Muki Betzer—reached the house on Verdun Street, they found out that the building's gate was not locked and the guard wasn't there; there would be no problem entering the building. The intelligence reports they had received specified that some security guards would be sitting in a gray Mercedes parked across the street, but there was no Mercedes in sight. The Sayeret teams entered the building and climbed the stairs to the terrorists' apartments. Only
Barak and Levin, who had remained outside, suddenly discovered that the security guards were sitting in the red Dauphine and engaged in a shooting fight with the man who got out of the car. The strident blare of the Dauphine's horn, whichwas hit by a bullet, echoed in the sleeping neighborhood, and the surprise effect was lost.

Muki Betzer, Yoni Netanyahu and two other soldiers reached Abu Yussuf's apartment and blew open the door with an explosive charge. For Betzer, the two seconds between the activating of the charge and its explosion seemed an eternity. The door blew off its hinges, and the commandos hurled themselves into the apartment. They stumbled upon Abu Yussuf's sixteen-year-old son. “Where's your father?” one of them asked in Arabic. The teenager stared in horror at the strangers wearing nylon stockings over their heads, then ran to his room and slipped down the drainpipe to a friend's apartment on the fifth floor. Abu Yussuf's remaining four children were in the apartment, but nobody touched them. Suddenly, a bedroom door opened before the soldiers and there was Black September's chief, Abu Yussuf, in his pajamas. He jumped back into the bedroom and slammed the door. His wife, Maha, tried to get her husband's handgun from the wardrobe. The fighters fired at the door, and Muki kicked it open. Several bursts of gunfire hit Abu Yussuf and Maha, who stood behind him. Yoni and another soldier shot him dead. Abu Yussuf, the man responsible for the Munich Massacre, lay dead on the floor.

Muki left the apartment and ran down the stairs, followed by his men.

In the other wing of the house the two other Sayeret teams approached the apartments of Adwan and Nasser. A few fighters, led by Amitai Nahmani, reached Adwan's apartment and one of them kicked the door open. Adwan stood in front of them, a Kalashnikov submachine gun in his hands. He hesitated for a split second before diving behind a curtain, simultaneously firing at the Israelis and wounding one of them. A soldier who had climbed the water pipe outside the building jumped into the room. At that moment Nahmani shot Adwan. The soldiers searched the apartment, refraining from harming Adwan's wife and two children; they stuffed files and documents into two suitcases and rushed out.

At the same moment the third team, led by Zvi Livne, blew up Kamal Nasser's door. The soldiers broke into the bedroom, where two women lay in their beds. Nasser was not there; the men fired under the beds, searched the closet and finally found the PLO spokesman in the kitchen, where they shot him. As they came out, the door of the apartment across the landing suddenly opened. One of the men fired instinctively and mortally wounded an elderly Italian woman who had been awakened by the shooting.

In the meantime a firefight had erupted in the street. A base of the Lebanese gendarmerie was located at a nearby corner; minutes after the exchange of fire with the security guard started, a Land Rover jeep from the gendarmerie arrived at the scene. Barak and Levin fired at the approaching jeep and hit the driver. The jeep crashed into the cars parked in the street. All its passengers were hit by Barak and Levin, soon joined by the fighters who came out of the building. Another gendarmerie jeep rushed up the street. The soldiers opened intense fire and stopped it as well. Barak ordered his men to get into the cars—and then a third jeep appeared. It was also met by heavy fire and a grenade thrown by Betzer. The gendarmes jumped off the burning vehicle and escaped to the entrance of a neighboring house.

The soldiers ran to the cars, and Yoni was the last to jump into the third car. The entire operation had lasted half an hour. The cars sped toward the beach, but as they approached the beach promenade, two gendarmerie jeeps appeared in front of them, moving slowly and inspecting the area. The American cars crawled behind the Land Rovers in perfect order, till the jeeps turned the corner. The Sayeret team safely arrived at the beach.

A
t the same time, in another part of Beirut, Lipkin-Shahak's paratroopers stealthily approached the headquarters of the PDFLP. They were fourteen, too—four details of two paratroopers each; Lipkin-Shahak; the unit physician; a Flotilla 13 fighter and the three drivers. The attack would start after two paratroopers would approach the building guards and kill them with silenced Berettas. The two paratroopers chosen
for that task were Avida Shor—the one who had convinced Elazar to use fewer explosives—and his friend, Hagai Maayan from kibbutz Magen.

They strolled in a leisurely way up Khartoum Street and stopped by the entrance to the terrorists' building to light their cigarettes. The guards stood there. “Excuse me,” Shor said to one of them in English. When the guards turned toward the Israelis, Shor and Maayan drew their handguns and shot them. As he fell down, one of the terrorists groaned, “Allah!”

Nobody noticed the two other guards sitting in a Fiat jeep armed with a “Dushka” Russian-made machine gun that was parked across the street. They suddenly opened fire and riddled the two paratroopers with bullets. Avida Shor was killed on the spot; Maayan was to succumb later. Yigal Pressler, another paratrooper who followed the two, was wounded. Lipkin called Shor and Maayan by radio but there was no answer. For Lipkin-Shahak, “this was a moment of real trouble. Shor doesn't answer, Maayan lies wounded in the street, Igal is bleeding—and we still have to blow up the building!”

From porches, windows and even from the street, the terrorists opened heavy fire on the paratroopers with rifles, Kalashnikovs and machine guns. For Lipkin-Shahak this was “real hell.” He radioed to Mano Shaked that there was “a complication.”

“Do you need help?” Shaked asked.

“Not for the moment,” Lipkin-Shahak said. Shaked immediately launched the diversionary operations, in order to pin down the Lebanese Army forces that might try to interfere in the fighting. The rubber boats, laden with soldiers, darted toward the beaches. The attack was advanced by three minutes, but these were precious minutes.

In Khartoum Street, a full-scale battle was raging between the paratroopers and the terrorists. A soldier tried to haul the wounded Igal to safety; one of the terrorists thought that Igal was one of them and tried to drag him to a nearby courtyard. He let go only after a fierce struggle with Avishai, a Flotilla 13 frogman. The explosions and the bursts of gunfire were accompanied by the terrorists' shouts:
“Yahood! Yahood!”
(“Jews!”) To the Israelis' amazement, in the heat of the battle, while
the street trembled with the fusillade, local civilians calmly kept going in and out of the neighboring buildings or stood on their porches and watched the combat with interest.

Under the heavy fire four paratroopers managed to enter the building lobby. Firing long bursts with their automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades, they repeatedly hit terrorists who came down the stairs. They now controlled the lobby. One of the paratroopers, Aharon Sabbag, suddenly noticed the lights on the elevator screen blinking in quick succession as the elevator descended to street level. He watched the numbers as if hypnotized. Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . As the elevator stopped, he emptied his whole magazine into the cabin. Nobody came out alive.

At that moment the car carrying the explosives broke into the lobby, and the sappers rapidly placed the charges by four of the supporting columns. The soldiers set the fuses for a 180-second delay, then retreated, while their comrades covered them by firing RPGs, bazookas, eighty-one-millimeter mortar shells and tear gas grenades on their way out. The paratroopers loaded the body of Avida Shor, and the still breathing Hagai Maayan, into one of the cars. The driver ignored Lipkin-Shahak's order to wait for the others and rushed down to the beach. The fighters tossed iron nails on the street, to delay any pursuing vehicles, then piled up in the two remaining cars and sped madly toward the beach. The entire operation had lasted twenty-four minutes.

Israeli helicopters emerged over Ramlet Al-Baida beach and evacuated the wounded, while the other men boarded the rubber boats and headed toward the missile boats. The six Mossad agents neatly parked the cars on the beach, leaving the keys in the ignitions, then jumped into the Zodiacs. The car rental bills would be paid in a few days through American Express. In the meantime the diversionary operations of the paratroopers and Flotilla 13 were completed as well, and the soldiers returned to the mother ships from other beaches.

Amnon Lipkin-Shahak turned back—and was petrified. He felt “like Lot's wife” from the Bible, as he saw a huge smoke mushroom rise over the PDFLP building.

In Haifa port Dayan and Elazar were waiting for the commandos. The mission was crowned with total success. The PDFLP headquarters had been destroyed and scores of high-ranking terrorists were buried beneath the ruins. Three of the top leaders of Fatah and Black September were dead. The world press described the IDF's amazing feat on its front pages. In the days to come, following the deaths of Black September's top leaders, the organization crumbled and then simply ceased to exist.

Mano Shaked, impressed with Lipkin-Shahak's calm under fire, awarded him his second medal. Ehud Barak and three other fighters were also decorated.

Less than six months after Spring of Youth, the Yom Kippur War exploded on the banks of the Suez Canal and the peaks of the Golan Heights.

   
EHUD BARAK, SAYERET MATKAL COMMANDER, LATER DEFENSE MINISTER AND PRIME MINISTER

          
“About four months earlier,Head of Operations General Kuti Adam had told us that several Fatah leaders were living in these buildings in Beirut, and asked if we could act. We said that we might. We passed on questions to the Mossad, received answers, but the issue calmed down. We made other plans—a raid on an officers' club in Syria and freeing pilots from a prison next to Damascus.

              
“I was with my wife on a weekend in Eilat when I was summoned to the chief of staff's office. Dado showed me some photographs and told me, ‘Here, these buildings.' The chief infantry and paratroopers' officer Mano Shaked proposed that we attack with a task force from the Thirty-fifth Brigade. To me, this looked like an assault on a fortified target—you arrive with forty guys, set down roadblocks, raid every house. . . . I said, ‘It's impossible with such a large force. We need the element of surprise. We need to do this with fourteen or fifteen people, to come in civilian attire with American cars and kill them.' This was approved.

              
“I told my people, ‘We'll kill them in bed.' But two of the team commanders said to me, ‘What do you mean, kill them in bed? We kill people in bed? What have they done that makes killing them justified? Does that square with our principle of “purity of arms”?'

              
I said, ‘They are bad, dangerous people, working with Arafat.' They said, ‘That's nice, but you don't have authority. We want to know that the chief of staff thinks this is legitimate.' I said fine, but I brushed it off. They reminded me of what I had said again and again, and eventually I brought in the chief of staff—and he explained it to them.

              
“They carried out the task very well. Both were killed in the Yom Kippur War.”

   
AMNON LIPKIN-SHAHAK, COMMANDER OF A PARATROOPER BATTALION, LATER THE CHIEF OF STAFF

          
“During the battle, we loaded Yigal Pressler, who was wounded, and the body of Avida Shor into one of our cars. But suddenly we saw that the car had disappeared, along with the driver, an older man from the Mossad. We all managed to get into two cars, and we sped off toward the beach. We found the driver there with the third car. I asked what had happened. He told me that, during the War of Independence, he had fought at the Koach fortress, in Galilee, and his commanders had told him, ‘You don't move from here.' He didn't move, and fought, even when his friends retreated, until the Arabs won. He hid under the corpses, and that was how he survived. He later crawled out of there and managed to get away.

              
“Now, during the battle against the terrorists, he recalled that during the War of Independence, he had nearly been killed because he had stayed until the end. ‘I thought that you wouldn't get out of there,' he told me, ‘and I decided to drive to the beach where we landed, hoping that someone would save me.'

              
“He had simply fled.”

Since the 1967 Six Day War, Egypt and Syria have been planning their revenge. On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, they attack Israel simultaneously. Israel has its same leaders, and the chief of staff is David Elazar. The Arab leaders have changed: Egypt's Nasser has died and been replaced by Anwar Sadat. Syria's Salah el Jadid is in prison, after a coup by his defense minister, Hafez al-Assad. King Hussein is not a member of the Sadat-Assad alliance; on the contrary, he has secretly warned Israel's leaders of the forthcoming attack. Unfortunately, his warnings have not been taken seriously.

A
t 4:30
P.M
., on October 15, 1973, the paratroopers of the 247th Reserve Brigade climbed into their half-tracks. The last-minute briefing had just ended, and harried staff sergeants ran to the commanders' half-tracks, carrying the operational maps. A soldier pressed an open tin of cold goulash in his comrade's hand, one of the authors of this book. “Eat something,” he cracked, “you'll get your next meal only in Africa.”

Africa. For nine days thousands of IDF soldiers and officers were expecting that mission: the moment when their battered army would break through the Egyptian lines that had been established in Sinai, would cross the Suez Canal and emerge at the enemy's rear. They knew that this mission would tip the scales of the war. They also believed that they were taking part in a crazy gamble—penetrating through a gap in the Egyptian lines, advancing between two huge Egyptian concentrations and reaching the canal. But exactly because of the mission's daring and tremendous risk taking it had great chances to be crowned with success. The Egyptians certainly
wouldn't even imagine that the IDF would take such a risky gamble before it had succeeded in crushing their forces entrenched on the eastern bank of the canal.

The war had started on October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur—the Jewish Day of Atonement. At 2:00
P.M
., the armies of Syria and Egypt simultaneously attacked Israel on two fronts—in the Golan Heights and along the Suez Canal. In the Golan Heights, the Syrians were stopped only because of the desperate courage and the resolve of a few. In the south, the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal to Israeli-occupied Sinai, conquered most of the IDF forts along the canal and entrenched themselves strongly in a five-mile-deep strip of land in Sinai, causing painful losses to Israel. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan seemed to waver, as he expressed fear for the possible collapse of “the Third Temple” symbolizing the state of Israel; the pretentious declaration of Chief of Staff Elazar that “we'll break their bones” turned out to be just a bubble of hot air.

The counteroffensive of Division 162, under the command of General Avraham (“Bren”) Adan, was launched on October 8 and ended in failure. He confronted the Egyptian army and tried to cross the canal, but was repelled. The mission was reluctantly handed over to General Arik Sharon, whose Division 143 also included the famous 247th (former 55th), the reserve Paratroopers Brigade that had conquered Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

At forty-five, Sharon was back in the saddle. After several years in minor positions, he finally had been brought back from the cold by Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, who appreciated his military talent. Ben-Gurion himself had asked Rabin to “take care” of Sharon, whom he loved, in spite of the flaws in his character. Sharon had been promoted to general, and had performed brilliantly in the Six Day War; his combined assault on Abu Ageila fortress in Sinai was being taught in military academies around the world. He had left the army in 1973 after serving as commander of the Southern District and had turned to politics, joining the Likud party, but when the Yom Kippur War broke out he returned as commander of Division 143. In the meantime, Sharon
had been hit by two tragedies: his wife, Margalit, had been killed in a car crash, and their eleven-year-old son, Gur, died in an accident, playing with an old rifle. Sharon, though, found solace in the arms of Gali's younger sister, Lily, who married him, gave him two sons and became a wonderful support for him for the rest of her life.

Sharon's superiors in the IDF didn't really want him to cross the canal. Sharon was a maverick, undisciplined, arrogant and a lover of publicity. Besides, he had just become a right-wing political leader, while most of his superiors, including Chief of Staff Elazar, were former members of the left-leaning Palmach. But after Adan's failure of October 8, and Dayan's intervention in favor of the 101 founder, they had no choice but to turn to Sharon.

Sharon, determined that it would be him who'd cross the canal, conceived a plan that seemed absolutely insane. On a patrol in enemy territory, the reconnaissance battalion of his division discovered an intriguing fact. The Egyptian forces that had crossed the canal and occupied a five-mile strip along it were divided into two armies—the Second and the Third. The reconnaissance battalion found out that there was no land continuity between the two armies, but a kind of narrow no-man's-land was separating them. This gave Sharon the idea to send a brigade along the “seam” between the two armies. After reaching and crossing the canal, it would establish a bridgehead in the rear of the Egyptians, lay bridges over Suez and bring the war to the Egyptian heartland. The idea was insane indeed—so insane that nobody in a normal state of mind would believe it could be carried out.

Michael Bar-Zohar, one of the authors of this book, accompanied Sharon and Colonel Amnon Reshef, the commander of an armored brigade, on their climb to the top of an arid hill, and Sharon ordered Reshef's artillery to fire phosphorus shells at five-hundred-meter intervals along the “seam” between the two Egyptian armies. When the firing started, Sharon watched through his binoculars the white smoke mushrooms that sprouted along the “seam” to the very canal; the lack of any movement in the no-man's-land between the two armies proved that there were no Egyptian units there. Still, no crossing was possible
as long as the bulk of the Egyptian armor was deployed on the African side of the canal; it could easily destroy the bridgehead and eradicate any IDF unit that had crossed the waterway. Sharon had to wait for the elite Egyptian armored units to cross the canal and engage the Israeli armor. And the Israeli armor was ready.

He didn't have to wait long. On October 14, hundreds of Egyptian tanks, including a large part of the crack 4th Armored Division, crossed the canal. A formidable battle ensued, and after a few hours the burning carcasses of 250 Egyptian tanks were strewn in the sands of Sinai. The IDF lost only twenty-five tanks. The time had come to launch Sharon's plan, code name Bravehearts.

And bravehearts they were indeed, all those reserve paratroopers who had fought in most of Israel battles, their feats crowned with the conquest of Jerusalem. Motta Gur wasn't their commander anymore—he had been appointed IDF attaché to the Israeli embassy in Washington. The leader of Brigade 247 was another legendary commander—Danny Matt.

Born in Cologne, Germany, raised in a religious moshav on the coastal plain, Danny—barely sixteen—had joined the British Coast Guard, then enlisted in the British Army and participated in the last stages of World War II. Back in Israel he joined the Palmach and settled in kibbutz Ein Zurim, in a cluster of agricultural villages south of Jerusalem, called Bloc Etzion. On May 12, 1948, two days before Israel was created, a huge mass of Arab irregulars attacked the bloc, massacring scores of its inhabitants. Danny, manning a position close to Ein Zurim, found himself facing thousands of Arabs, who were yelling; waving rifles, axes, and knives; and submerging the area. Feverishly, he attached thirteen grenades to his belt, grabbed a machine gun and started firing at the advancing crowd. The first wave of attackers collapsed, but they were replaced by hundreds of others, all of them screaming and charging his isolated position. He knew that if they reached him they'd tear him to pieces, and so he kept firing, mowing down line after line of attackers. He started pulling hand grenades with his right hand, removing the triggering pin with his teeth, while firing the machine gun with his left. Scores of dead attackers piled in
front of him. As he ran out of ammunition he threw away the machine gun, removed the pin of his last grenade, raised the grenade above his head and ran toward kibbutz Revadim. The mass of Arabs parted before that crazy bearded man waving an armed hand grenade. He reached the kibbutz, followed by a fierce crowd of enemies; somebody dragged him into a house, another guy sheared his beard with a pair of scissors, a third shaved his stubble with an old razor, without water or shaving cream, tearing pieces of skin from his face, while outside the Arab crowd kept yelling, “Where is the bearded one? Where is the murderer? Give us the murderer!”

Fortunately, at that moment the Jordanian Legion arrived and took all the kibbutz men prisoner. Danny put on large sunglasses and joined his comrades. He was not recognized. He spent a year as a prisoner of war in Jordan. Upon returning he grew his beard again, joined the paratroopers, commanded an elite company, participated in all the reprisal raids and was severely wounded in the Mitla battle. He spent two years at the War College in Paris, later distinguished himself in the Six Day War—and finally assumed command over the famous 247th Brigade.

O
n October 15, at sunset, several units carried a diversionary attack on the Egyptian forces, while Danny's brigade, riding on half-tracks, moved toward the Suez Canal on a narrow asphalt road, code-named Spider. One battalion of the 247th was late arriving to the assembly area, but Danny refused to delay the mission and moved forward with the two remaining battalions. The plan was that at 8:00
P.M
., the paratroopers would reach the canal, board rubber boats and cross the waterway in proximity to Deversoir, where the canal flows into the Great Bitter Lake. Sharon, on the commanding half-track, was not far behind them.

The crossing, however, almost failed because of a traffic jam. The paratroopers' half-tracks got stuck in the middle of a nightmarish tangle of hundreds of vehicles. Heavy trucks, jeeps, pickups, and even private cars surrounded by crowds of reserve soldiers were massed along
several miles on the narrow road, blocking Danny Matt's convoy. Once in a while, the paratroopers' vehicles would break through and advance a couple of hundred yards, then become immobilized again. The troubled voices of Sharon and his deputy echoed in the brigade commander's radio over and over again. The most crucial mission of the war could end in failure because the IDF could not overcome traffic congestion.

The Israeli tanks cross the Suez Canal on the pontoon bridge.

(Bamachane, IDF Archive)

The road cleared only after midnight. Headlights off, the convoy sped on the Spider route toward the red flashes and the smoke mushrooms hovering over the nearby hills and across the canal. At a road crossing a naval unit loaded a score of rubber boats on the half-tracks. The IDF artillery shelled the crossing areas in order to drive away the Egyptian soldiers that might be positioned there. A tank battalion and a commando on half-tracks from another brigade emerged at the head of the convoy to protect it on its way to the canal.

But the escort was the first to be hit. Darting forward before the paratroopers, the tank battalion fell into an Egyptian ambush. Most of the tanks and the commando half-tracks were hit and burst into flames. The losses were heavy, but Danny Matt's convoy bypassed the burning armor and continued its advance toward the canal. Miraculously, the Egyptians did not notice the advance unit and it easily reached the canal bank. But when the bulk of the convoy approached, with the brigade commander's half-track at its head, it was met with heavy, sustained fire. Egyptian soldiers of the Second and Third armies, stationed in the sandy flatlands by the canal, sighted Matt's half-track, which signaled with its headlights to Sharon, who watched the convoy from a nearby hill. The sheaf of antennae, protruding from the canvas top of the vehicle, was another sign that this was the commander's half-track. The Egyptians attacked the convoy with bazookas, machine guns and other weapons. Missiles whooshed beside the vehicles and the paratroopers returned fire. Yet, the Egyptians were too far away, as Sharon had surmised, and most of their fire was ineffective.

After several turns of the road the enemy fire weakened. The convoy stopped in a kind of courtyard, surrounded by steep sand ramparts. The soldiers climbed up the western rampart and descended on its other side. At their feet glistened a calm, silvery stripe—the Suez Canal. The rubber boats were unloaded and swiftly brought to the water. The paratroopers jumped into them, and one after the other the boats ploughed the Suez waters, heading for the African bank. At 1:25 Danny Matt radioed the word “Aquarium,” meaning the boats were in the water. He then boarded one of the first boats. Bar-Zohar crouched beside him. A few shells exploded by the fast moving boats. Most of the fighters were excited, feeling they were experiencing a dramatic moment, a game-changing event that could seal the outcome of the war.