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• My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace - 2018 St. Martin's Press, New York, NY

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Barak

  Ehud Barak
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  Ehud Barak
  Ehud Barak at Pentagon, 11-2009.jpg
  Barak in 2009
  10th Prime Minister of Israel
  In office
  6 July 1999 – 7 March 2001
  President Ezer Weizman
  Moshe Katsav
  Deputy Yitzhak Mordechai
  David Levy
  Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
  Preceded by Benjamin Netanyahu
  Succeeded by Ariel Sharon
  Minister of Defense
  In office
  18 June 2007 – 18 March 2013
  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
  Benjamin Netanyahu
  Deputy Matan Vilnai
  Preceded by Amir Peretz
  Succeeded by Moshe Ya'alon
  In office
  6 July 1999 – 7 March 2001
  Prime Minister Himself
  Deputy Efraim Sneh
  Preceded by Moshe Arens
  Succeeded by Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
  Minister of Foreign Affairs
  In office
  22 November 1995 – 18 June 1996
  Prime Minister Shimon Peres
  Deputy Eli Dayan
  Preceded by Shimon Peres
  Succeeded by David Levy
  Chief of General Staff
  In office
  1 April 1991 – 1 January 1995
  President Chaim Herzog
  Ezer Weizman
  Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
  Yitzhak Rabin
  Deputy Amnon Lipkin-Shahak
  Matan Vilnai
  Minister Moshe Arens
  Yitzhak Rabin
  Preceded by Dan Shomron
  Succeeded by Amnon Lipkin-Shahak
  Personal details
  Born Ehud Brog
  12 February 1942 (age 76)
  Mishmar HaSharon,
  Mandatory Palestine
  Political party Labor Party (until 2011)
  Independence (from 2011)
  Spouse(s) Nava Cohen (divorced)
  Nili Priel
  Children 3
  Alma mater Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Stanford University
  Profession Military officer
  Awards Medal of Distinguished Service
  Tzalash (4)
  Legion of Merit
  DoD Medal for Distinguished Public Service
  Signature
  Military service
  Allegiance Israel
  Service/branch Flag of the Israel Defense Forces.svg Israeli Defense Forces
  Years of service 1959–1995
  Rank IDF rav aluf rotated.svg Lieutenant general
  Unit Sayeret Matkal
  Commands Chief of General Staff
  Deputy Chief of General Staff
  Central Command
  Military Intelligence Directorate Aman
  Sayeret Matkal
  Battles/wars Six-Day War
  Yom Kippur War
  Operation Entebbe
  Ehud Barak (Hebrew: About this sound אֵהוּד בָּרָק‬ (help·info), born Ehud Brog; 12 February 1942) is an Israeli politician who served as the tenth Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until January 2011.[1] He previously held the posts of Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu's second government from 2009 to 2013.

  He is the joint most highly decorated soldier in Israel's history, having taken part in many battles and combat missions. He is a graduate in physics, mathematics, and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stanford University. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. Following a highly decorated career, he was appointed Chief of General Staff in 1991, serving until 1995. On 26 November 2012 he announced that he would retire from politics after the next election in January 2013.[2]

  Contents
  1 Personal life
  1.1 Education
  2 Military service
  3 Political career
  3.1 Prime Minister of Israel
  3.2 Domestic issues
  3.3 Resignation
  3.4 Return to politics
  3.4.1 Defense Minister
  3.4.2 As head of the Labor Party
  3.4.3 Leaving the Labor Party
  4 Wealth
  5 References in popular culture
  6 See also
  7 References
  8 Bibliography
  9 External links
  Personal life
  Barak was born on 12 February 1942 in kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon in what was then Mandatory Palestine.[3] He is the eldest of four sons of Esther (née Godin; 25 June 1914 – 12 August 2013) and Yisrael Mendel Brog (24 August 1910 – 8 February 2002).

  His paternal grandparents, Frieda and Reuven Brog, were murdered in Pušalotas (Pushelat) in the northern Lithuania (then ruled by Russian Empire) in 1912, leaving his father orphaned at the age of two. Barak's maternal grandparents, Elka and Shmuel Godin, died at the Treblinka extermination camp during the Holocaust.

  Ehud hebraized his family name from "Brog" to "Barak" in 1972. It was during his military service that he met his future wife, Nava (née Cohen, born 8 April 1947 in Tiberias). They had three daughters together: Michal (born 9 August 1970), Yael (born 23 October 1974) and Anat (born 16 October 1981). He has grandchildren.[4] Barak divorced Nava in August 2003. On 30 July 2007, Barak married Nili Priel (born 25 April 1944) in a small ceremony in his private residence. In his spare time, Barak enjoys reading works by writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,[5] and he is a classical pianist, with many years of study behind him.

  Education
  Barak earned his bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968, and his master's degree in engineering-economic systems in 1978 from Stanford University, in California.

  Military service
  Barak joined the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.) in 1959. He served in the IDF for 35 years, rising to the position of Chief of the General Staff and the rank of Rav Aluf (Lieutenant-General), the highest in the Israeli military. During his service as a commando in the elite Sayeret Matkal, Barak led several highly acclaimed operations, such as: "Operation Isotope", the mission to free the hostages on board the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 at Lod Airport in 1972; the covert 1973 Israeli raid on Lebanon in Beirut, in which he was disguised as a woman to kill members of the Palestine Liberation Organization; Barak was also a key architect of the June 1976 Operation Entebbe, another rescue mission to free the hostages of the Air France aircraft hijacked by terrorists and forced to land at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda. These highly acclaimed operations, along with Operation Bayonet, led to the dismantling of Palestinian terrorist cell Black September. It has been alluded that Barak also masterminded the Tunis Raid on 16 April 1988, in which PLO leader Abu Jihad was killed.[6]

  During the Yom Kippur War, Barak commanded an improvised regiment of tanks which, among other things, helped rescue paratrooper battalion 890, commanded by Yitzhak Mordechai, which was suffering heavy losses in the Battle of the Chinese Farm. He went on the command the 401st armored brigade and the 611st "Pillar of Fire" and 252nd "Sinai" divisions, before his appointment to head the IDF's Planning Directorate. Barak later served as head of Aman, the Military Intelligence Directorate (1983–85), head of Central Command (1986–87) and Deputy Chief of the General Staff (1987–91). He served as Chief of the General Staff between 1 April 1991 and 1 January 1995. During this period he implemented the first Oslo Accords and participated in the negotiations towards the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.

  Barak was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service and four Chief of Staff citations (Tzalash HaRamatkal) for courage and operational excellence. These five decorations make him the most decorated soldier in Israeli history (jointly with close friend Nechemya Cohen and Major Amitai Hason).[7] In 1992 he was awarded the Legion of Merit (Commander) by the United States.[8] In 2012, he was again awarded by the United States with the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.[9]

  Political career
  On 7 July 1995, Barak was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs by Yitzhak Rabin. When Shimon Peres formed a new government following Rabin's assassination in November 1995, Barak was made Minister of Foreign Affairs (1995–96).[10] He was elected to the Knesset on the Labor Party list in 1996, and served as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Following internal elections after Peres' defeat in the election for Prime Minister in 1996, Barak became the leader of the Labor Party.

  Prime Minister of Israel

  Barak at the Pentagon (1999)

  Ehud Barak shaking hands with Yasser Arafat, joined by President Bill Clinton (1999)
  In the 1999 Prime Ministerial election, Barak beat Benjamin Netanyahu by a wide margin. However, he sparked controversy by deciding to form a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, who had won an unprecedented 17 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Shas grudgingly agreed to Barak's terms that they eject their leader Aryeh Deri, a convicted felon, and enact reform to "clean up" in-party corruption. Consequentially, the left wing Meretz party quit the coalition after they failed to agree on the powers to be given to a Shas deputy minister in the Ministry of Education.

  In 1999 Barak gave a campaign promise to end Israel's 22-year-long occupation of Southern Lebanon within a year. On 24 May 2000 Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon. On 7 October, three Israeli soldiers were killed in a border raid by Hezbollah and their bodies were subsequently captured. The bodies of these soldiers, along with the living Elhanan Tenenbaum, were eventually exchanged for Lebanese captives in 2004.

  The Barak government resumed peace negotiations with the PLO, stating that "Every attempt [by the State of Israel] to keep hold of this area [the West Bank and Gaza] as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don't vote it is an apartheid state."[11] As part of these negotiations, Barak took part in the Camp David 2000 Summit which was meant finally to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict but failed. Barak also allowed Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami to attend the Taba Summit with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, after his government had fallen.

  Domestic issues
  On 22 August 1999, Barak appointed the Tal committee which dealt with the controversial issue of ultra-Orthodox Jews' exemption from military service.[12] Following the failure of the Camp David summit with Arafat and Bill Clinton in the summer of 2000, when the original 7 years mandate of the PNA expired, and just after Israel pulled out its last troops out of southern Lebanon in May 2000, the weeks-long Riots in October 2000 led to the killing of twelve Israeli Arabs and one Palestinian by Israel Police and one Jewish civilian by Israeli Arabs.

  Resignation
  In 2001, Barak called a special election for Prime Minister. In the contest, he was defeated by Likud leader Ariel Sharon, and subsequently resigned as Labor leader and from the Knesset. He left Israel to work as a senior advisor with United States-based Electronic Data Systems. He also partnered with a private equity company focused on "security-related" work.

  Return to politics

  Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Victoria Affair, March 2011
  In 2005, Barak announced his return to Israeli politics, and ran for leadership of the Labor Party in November. However, in light of his weak poll showings, Barak dropped out of the race early and declared his support for veteran statesman Shimon Peres. Following his failed attempt to maintain leadership of the Labor party, Barak became a partner of the investment company SCP Private Equity Partners, Pennsylvania. He also established a company "Ehud Barak Limited" which is thought to have made over NIS 30 million.[13]

  After Peres lost the race to Amir Peretz and left the Labor party, Barak announced he would stay at the party, despite his shaky relationship with its newly elected leader. He declared, however, that he would not run for a spot on the Labor party's Knesset list for the March 2006 elections. Barak's attempt to return to a prominent role in Israel politics seemed to have failed. However, Peretz's hold on the Labor leadership proved unexpectedly shaky as he was badly damaged by negative views of his performance as Defense Minister during the 2006 Lebanon War, which was seen as something less than a success in Israel.[14]

  In January 2007 Barak launched a bid to recapture the leadership of the Labor party in a letter acknowledging "mistakes" and "inexperience" during his tenure as Prime Minister.[15] In early March 2007, a poll of Labor Party primary voters put Barak ahead of all other opponents, including Peretz.[16] In the first round of voting, on 28 May 2007, he gained 39% of the votes, more than his two closest rivals, but not enough to win the election.[17]

  As a result, Barak faced a runoff against the second-place finisher, Ami Ayalon, on 12 June 2007, which he won by a narrow margin.[18]

  Barak has been critical of what he sees as racist sentiments that have recently been expressed by some Israeli rabbis and rebbetzins; he views such statements as a threat to Israeli unity and that they may lead Israeli society into a "dark and dangerous place".[19]

  Defense Minister

  Ehud Barak and Condoleezza Rice (2007)
  As head of the Labor Party
  After winning back the leadership of the Labor party, Barak was sworn in as Minister of Defense on 18 June 2007, as part of Prime Minister Olmert's cabinet reshuffle. However, on 1 July 2007, Barak led a successful effort in the Labor central committee to stipulate that Labor would leave the government coalition if Olmert did not resign by September or October 2007. At that time the Winograd Commission would publish its final report on the performance of the Israel Defense Forces and its civilian leadership. The preliminary Winograd report released earlier this year laid most of the blame on Olmert for poorly planning, executing, and reviewing war strategies in the 2006 conflict against Hezbollah.[20]

  From December 2008 to January 2009, Barak led Operation Cast Lead.[21]

  Labor won only 13 out of the 120 Knesset seats in the 2009 elections, making them the fourth largest party. Barak and other Labor officials initially stated they would not take part in the next government. However, over the objections of some in the Labor party, Barak later[when?] reached an agreement under which Labor joined the governing coalition. Barak retained his position as Defense Minister.

  Leaving the Labor Party
  In January 2011, Labor Party leader Barak formed a breakaway party, Independence, which enabled him to maintain his loyal Labor's MK faction within Netanyahu's government, and prevented the departure of Labor party as a whole from Netanyahu's coalition-government. Labor previously threatened to force Barak to do so. After Barak's move, Netanyahu was able to maintain a majority of 66 MK (out of 120 in the Knesset), previously having 74 MKs within his majority coalition.

  In February 2011, Barak attended a ceremony at the UN for the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Barak told the UN General Assembly that "an independent, strong, thriving and peaceful State of Israel is the vengeance of the dead."[22]

  In 2012, Barak's Independence party was due to run for election but decided not to, choosing to quit politics. Barak planned to quit since Operation Pillar of Defense and the Gaza War but postponed it till later that year.[23]

  Barak stated during an American television interview that he would "probably" strive for nuclear weapons if he were in Iran's position, adding "I don't delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel". This comment has been criticized and compared to Barak's comment in 1998 during a television interview when he said that if he were a Palestinian he would probably have joined one of the terror organizations.[24]

  Wealth
  In an interview with Haaretz reported in January 2015, Barak was asked to explain the source of his "big" capital, with which he "bought 5 apartments and connected them," and by which he "lives in a giant rental apartment in a luxury high rise." Barak said he currently earns more than a million dollars a year, and that from 2001–2007, he also earned more than a million dollars every year, from giving lectures and from consulting for hedge funds. Barak also said he made millions of dollars more from his investments in Israeli real estate properties.[25]

  In the interview, Barak was asked whether he is a lobbyist that earns a living from "opening doors." The interviewer stated "You have arrived recently at the Kazakhstan despot Nazarbayev and the president of Ghana. You are received immediately." Barak confirmed that he has been received by these heads of state but denied earning money from opening doors for international business deals for Israeli and foreign corporations, and said he does not see any ethical or moral problems in his business activities. He further said there is no logic to demand of him, after "the natural process in democracy has ended" to not utilize the tools he accumulated in his career to secure his financial future. When asked if his financial worth is 10-15 million dollars, Barak said "I'm not far from there."[25]

  References in popular culture
  The film Munich includes a scene reflecting the real Barak's experience leading his Sayeret Matkal unit in the commando raid Operation Spring of Youth; he is mentioned by name, and appears disguised as a woman in high heels while firing on presumed PLO Leaders.[26]
  See also
  flag Israel portal
  List of Israel's Chiefs of the General Staff

• Canadian Jewish News - http://www.cjnews.com/culture/books-and-authors/ehud-barak-regional-diplomacy-key-to-gaza-situation

  EHUD BARAK: REGIONAL DIPLOMACY KEY TO GAZA SITUATION
  By Hanna Alberga and Ron Csillag - June 21, 2018 168 0
  FacebookTwitter

  Ehud Barak at the Western Wall. (Avi Ohayon/ GPO photo)

  Ehud Barak (File Photo)
  Ehud Barak is Israel’s most decorated soldier and among its senior statesmen. He served as the IDF chief of staff from 1991 to 1995, the country’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001 and its defence minister from 2007 to 2013. His autobiography, My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace, was recently published.

  Barak, 76, was recently in Toronto for the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Spirit of Hope dinner.

  Was the rioting at the Gaza border the new normal, the future of protests for Palestinians?

  I don’t know. Only time will tell. The situation is different in Gaza than in the West Bank. It’s true that some voices within the Palestinians are calling for total non-violence, but you cannot call these protests in Gaza non-violent.

  Especially for us, for people from the centre-left camp in Israel who believe in the two-state solution … I hope it will stop. No one is happy when almost 60 people are killed in one day. Even six are too many. But in this case, we don’t have a lot of options. Israel cannot afford its border being crossed, not just for symbolic reasons.

  But the real lesson from these events is the need to dig seriously into the roots of Gaza becoming a pressure cooker. We don’t have a quarrel with Gazans themselves; 1.8 million people want food, shelter, good education, reasonable quality of water and electricity around the clock. We have to sit down with the Egyptians and other neighbours and agencies to see what should and could be done to reduce the suffering in Gaza.

  Is the notion of the two-state solution finished?

  No. I think there are many people, especially right-wing people in Israel, which is now the government, and a few on the extreme left, who serve the same objective. The right wing in Israel and a few on the extreme left tend to argue that it’s over, we’ve crossed the point of no return. I don’t believe it. With the right cocktail of circumstances and followers and leadership on both sides, it could be solved – and 20 years later, you wouldn’t understand why the hell it took such a long time.

  We’ve heard a great deal about missed Palestinian opportunities. What were some opportunities for peace Israel missed?

  I don’t want to go to the past, to lament spilled milk. Nowadays, the main opportunity, which has been missed in front of our eyes for the last three years, is for a regional deal. There is a clear common interest among moderate Sunni Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan – and Israel – based on three elements: cornering Iran with its nuclear intentions, ending radical Muslim terror and joining hands in huge infrastructure projects in water and energy. And in a way, we are missing it.

  There is a lot of talk about it and a lot of high-level contact, but not enough daring on the Israeli side. A regional deal cannot fly without Israel taking sincere steps toward the Palestinians. Sunni Arab leaders cannot feel safe if they normalize relations with Israel, engage with the Israeli public, accept Israel as a legitimate member of the community of nations while millions of Palestinians are what they describe as under the Israeli boot.

  The options are clear. If another government in Israel believed in negotiations with the Palestinians, the process would have started. It probably would not have reached an agreement, but Sunni leaders do not necessarily need a final result – they need the process and a sincere one. So we are missing it, and I cannot understand the reason our government isn’t doing it: “It’s against our security.” That’s a great example of missed opportunity.

  What are the implications for Israel over the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal?

  I thought that pulling out was not the optimal way to deal with the problems. The problems are real – missiles, terror, insurgency – but there was a way to start negotiations with the Europeans, talk to Russia and start negotiating externally. But once Trump pulled out, it becomes a new reality.

  It’s bad news and good news. The good news is that Iranians became more cautious. They are afraid that the Americans’ real intention now is to wait for the slightest violation of the deal, probably even a fabricated violation, and the Americans might launch a surgical military attack against a nuclear facility. They might even suspect that the Americans are aiming to remove the whole regime. So Iran is becoming more cautious.

  There is, of course, some bad news. If Iran decides at some point to resume nuclear activities or uranium enrichment, they will argue that they were not the first ones to break the agreement – it was already broken by the Americans. It’s the same with the North Koreans. They will argue, “What sense does it make to make a deal with the American president if the next president can wake up one morning and just cancel it?” It’s not easy.

  You are very hard on Israel’s current government. In your book, you call it “the most right-wing, deliberately divisive, narrow-minded and messianic government we have seen in our seven-decade history. It has sought to redefine Zionism.” Who from the centre or left can replace Netanyahu?

  My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace by Ehud Barak (St. Martin’s Press)
  I never saw a shortage of candidates. I basically have a good impression of Netanyahu as a human being, even at the height of my critique. Personally, I have more empathy for Netanyahu than the inner core of ministers around him. He was a good officer. As a politician, he’s not a lightweight. He’s thoughtful, knowledgeable, a very experienced politician. But he developed, in the last several years, a mindset that is a good recipe for survival – which is his main objective – but a bad recipe for statesmanship.

  But his strategy seems to have worked. He is in a political comfort zone.

  Sometimes strategic and political tactics work in spite of having no grounding in reality. In fact, I have said that this whole concept of “post-truth,” “alternative facts” and “fake news” has been part of the politics of Israel long before they got traction in the English language.

  The government is bad because it’s wrong. It creates a cocktail of pessimism, passivity, deep anxiety and self-victimhood. It’s a poor recipe for statesmanship because it creates self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, the government always argues, “Wait, you will see Hamas come to the table.” How will Hamas come? Let’s strengthen the Palestinian Authority, which is anti-Hamas. But you find government ministers fighting to weaken the Palestinian Authority. I used to scold them: “Who do you expect will replace the Palestinian Authority? It will be Hamas.”

  READ: TORIES BLAST ISLAMIC CLERIC, QUESTION HOW HIS GROUP GOT GOVERNMENT FUNDING

  So the status quo does not favour Israel?

  With the tailwind from Trump and the present situation in the Arab world, we could easily proactively start to make sure that a door to a two-state solution will not be closed. All our security experts are telling us, loud and clear, Israel is more secure and can fight terror more effectively if we muster the political will to delineate a line within Israel.

  A line will include all our security needs and 80 per cent of the settlers. So the whole debate in Israel is around what to do with the last 20 per cent of the settlers spread all over the Palestinian-inhabited areas of the West Bank. These settlements, according to our experts – those in and out of uniform – are a burden on our security, not our salvation. They contribute nothing to our security.

  I don’t underestimate the role of the biblical promise in our coming back to Israel after 2,000 years, but borders change according to the geopolitical situation, not according to promises. Promises give you a lot of inspiration, but you decide upon realities. Ultimate security comes from changing the rules of the game.

  What is the greatest challenge Israel faces today?

  To put a wedge in this slippery slope toward a one-state solution and change direction. It’s true that we have a populist, ultra-nationalist government, and like all populist, ultra-nationalist governments, they are trying to base the public’s national identity not on all the positive contributions we can make to the world or to ourselves, but by defining the collective as demons from without and traitors from within. That’s a popular way for authoritarian, ultra-populist leadership. It happens in front of our eyes. Israeli democracy is under direct attack, like an autoimmune disease, from our own government. The government attacks the Supreme Court, civil society and NGOs, the media, laws and rules of courts, the IDF and the civil service – and that’s a challenging and risky situation.

  This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.

• My Country, My Life - https://books.google.com/books?id=N62DCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true

  quote from chapter 1

Barak, Ehud: MY COUNTRY, MY LIFE
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Barak, Ehud MY COUNTRY, MY LIFE St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $29.99 5, 8 ISBN: 978-1-250-07936-7

A former prime minister reveals divisive conflict within and beyond Israel's borders.

Growing up on a kibbutz, Barak was 6 years old when the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948. Immediately, Arab armies invaded, the first of many wars that the author chronicles in his vividly detailed, often chillingly tense memoir of Israel's--and his own--fraught history. Israel won the 1948 war, gaining about a third more land than the U.N. partition plan proposed, but at the cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Nevertheless, for the young Barak, the consequences were inevitable: For Israel to exist, "we had to win and the Arabs had to lose." The Six-Day War in 1967 underscored that idea: Israel prevailed militarily and tripled the territory it controlled. Suddenly, "we had a sense that we could breathe." Although he knew then that Israel's Arab neighbors had not turned into friends, he believed that "having come face-to-face with our overwhelming military supremacy Arab states would, over time, grant Israel simple acceptance," and possibly, in the future, peace. By 1967, Barak was a soldier; considering a career as a physicist, he opted instead for the army and rose through the ranks to become a general. Among his close friends in the military was Benjamin Netanyahu, "smart, tough, and self-confident," who later became his political opponent. Barak recounts crisis after crisis--hijacked planes, outright wars, the assassinations of Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat, Intifadas--as Arabs grew increasingly combative, terrorist organizations coalesced, and Israeli right-wing factions gained power, determined to seize land and oppose a Palestinian state. The author entered politics when he joined Rabin's government, served as defense minister under his successor, Shimon Peres, and went on to lead the Labor Party and become a one-term prime minister. He describes in detail his frustrating role in pursuing peace agreements with the recalcitrant Arafat, and he volleys sharp criticism at Netanyahu's current militant leadership.

An insider's view of a volatile and violent history.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Barak, Ehud: MY COUNTRY, MY LIFE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700491/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5663ad68. Accessed 24 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700491

• Publishers Weekly
  https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-250-07936-7
  Word count: 221

  My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace
  Ehud Barak. St. Martin’s, $29.99 (480p) ISBN 978-1-250-07936-7

  In this memoir of “the formative challenges in my life and in Israel’s,” Barak—who, after a military career, became Israel’s head of military intelligence, then its tenth prime minister, and later a defense minister for Benjamin Netanyahu—reveals a great deal about Israel’s post-1967 military, strategic, and diplomatic history. He lets readers in on debates within the military that preceded the 1976 Entebbe rescue and Israel’s plans to assassinate Saddam Hussein (dropped because of the First Gulf War). He also includes a detailed account of the 2000 Camp David meeting among President Bill Clinton, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and himself—the last significant attempt at a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. It foundered partly because of the thorniest peace issue of all: Jerusalem. (Arafat insisted on total Palestinian sovereignty over the Old City.) Barak ends by criticizing Netanyahu’s government, calling it “the most right-wing, deliberately divisive, narrow-minded, and messianic... we have seen in our seven-decade history.” While Barak stints on details about his personal life, his writing is clear and full of colorful anecdotes. This is a significant resource for understanding Israel’s recent history. Agent: Flip Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May)

• Jewish Chronicle
  https://www.thejc.com/culture/books/review-my-country-my-life-1.464643
  Word count: 610

  Geoffrey D Paul

  May 28, 2018

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  Review: My Country, My Life
  Man of war — and peace

  Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak (Photo: THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images)
  Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak (Photo: THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images)
  My Country, My Life, By Ehud Barak
  Macmillan, £25

  An unexpectedly bearded Ehud Barak looks out from the dust cover of a book big enough to chronicle the very full life of a man who has been director of Israel military intelligence, IDF chief of staff, prime minister and leader of the Labour Party, and defence minister in governments headed by right-wing prime ministers Olmert and Netanyahu (the latter being one to whom he is vigorously, even bitterly, opposed politically and philosophically).

  There is scarcely one of Israel’s security or military operations of the past four decades in which Barak has not been involved and he relates them well, illumining the doubts, anxieties and hard decisions that leadership demands. He does acknowledge, however, that his record with the media is of someone unable to give straight answers or a single clear message: “My instincts went toward nuance, not sound bites.”

  He gives, without the subsequent Hollywood treatment, a raw account of his role, disguised as a rather plump woman, in the special forces’ overnight sally into Beirut, to “take out” three architects of the Black September massacre of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics. There’s a troubling recollection of the near-catastrophic Yom Kippur War, in which Israel lost 2,800 men and, particularly relevant at this time, he recalls the tension — and the reasons for it — within the Cabinet prior to “Operation Cast Lead” across the border into Gaza in 2007 against Hamas’s rocket attacks.

  Unsurprisingly, he ruminates at length on the unsuccessful summit at Camp David in 2000, which he had pressed President Clinton to host and at which even the most generous of his offers to Yasser Arafat were met with a blank No! For the Economist, Barak emerged as a tragic figure — bold to the point of recklessness, desperate to succeed and seemingly flabbergasted to be turned down when he offered 90 per cent of the West Bank, 100 per cent of Gaza, a foothold in East Jerusalem and a symbolic return of some Palestinian refugees.

  Barak was said by his critics to have locked himself in his cabin at Camp David during Clinton’s temporary absence, refusing to engage with the Palestinians. He himself admits that he absented himself deliberately for three days, running around Camp David in the sneakers he had thoughtfully brought with him, rather than hear another “No” from Arafat. The Palestinians claimed that Barak never engaged with Arafat directly, refused to put his ideas for a settlement in writing, never really intended to negotiate seriously and was not trusted by Arafat.

  For all his military achievements (he is Israel’s most decorated soldier, of which he is immensely proud), Barak is an ardent peacenik, an opponent of Israel’s continued occupation, which he believes has harmed Jews as much as it has Palestinian Arabs, and a vociferous critic of the settlement movement.

  The likelihood of Israel again producing a leader with an agenda and philosophy so amenable to Palestinian rights is most unlikely. In the end, Barak might not have won support at home, but Arafat at Camp David threw away the chance of negotiating the best settlement any Palestinian leader is ever likely to achieve.

  Geoffrey D Paul is a former editor of the JC

• Atlanta Jewish Times
  http://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/barak-traces-service-to-endangered-ideal/
  Word count: 809

  Barak Traces Service to Endangered IdealThe former Israeli prime minister acknowledges shortcomings and largely avoids self-glorification in memoir. BY NEAL GENDLER May 8, 2018, 6:00 am
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  IS-Timeline barak clintonPrime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton seem relaxed together at the White House in November 2000. (Photo by Moshe Milner, Israeli Government Press Office) NEWSROOM
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  EHUD BARAKISRAELISRAEL@70
  Ehud Barak, former commando, chief of staff, prime minister and defense minister, says Israel is facing its deepest crisis, and it comes from within.

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  The question is “whether the country … can survive as a democracy under the rule of law, true not only to Jewish history and traditions but to the moral code at its core,” he writes in “My Country, My Life.”
  He blames “the most right-wing, deliberately divisive, narrow-minded and messianic government we have seen in our seven-decade history,” which has “sought to redefine Zionism as about one thing only: ensuring eternal control over the whole of biblical Judea and Samaria … even if doing so leaves us significantly less secure.”

  That conclusion likely will delight Israel’s many critics, yet it comes only in an epilogue, after 439 pages of readable, interesting autobiography acknowledging shortcomings and luck while largely avoiding self-glorification (except maybe the 24 pages of photos).

  My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace
  By Ehud Barak
  St. Martin’s, 472 pages, $29.99

  He blames Palestinian leaders for rejecting generous offers by him in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 but fears that failure to separate will undermine Israel’s democratic Jewish majority. His criticism, forceful but not shrill, goes beyond Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, praised earlier for intellect and performance under Barak’s command of Sayeret Matkal, likened to the U.S. Delta Force.

  Barak was born in 1942 on Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, “a cluster of wood-and-tarpaper huts,” to parents from Poland and Lithuania. They encouraged his talent at the piano, which helped him unwind.

  Youthful fascination with locks brought him into Sayeret Matkal, then a tiny, secret intelligence unit needing a lock picker. Commissioned, he led squads into enemy states to map and to tap communications.

  Sayeret Matkal became a strike force in 1972, in Barak’s second year as commander, by coincidence: The closest unit to a hijacked airliner parked in Israel, its members entered the aircraft disguised as mechanics.

  Commando missions followed, including a Beirut raid with Barak and two others disguised as women. In 1973 army security insisted he change his name to enroll at Stanford. Brog became Barak — Hebrew for lightning. Recalled for the Yom Kippur War, he fought in Sinai, crossing into Egypt.

  After the war Barak became a full colonel and armored brigade commander. He helped plan the 1976 rescue at Entebbe.

  When Likud won the election in 1977, he returned to Stanford for two years, followed by promotion to brigadier general and division commander, major general heading Israel Defense Forces planning, then head of military intelligence involving “political and policy issues beyond the armed forces.”

  He became chief of staff in 1991 and emphasized mobility and high-tech weaponry.

  Barak ended his 36-year army career in 1995, in his early 50s, thinking of joining his brother in business. Yitzhak Rabin persuaded him instead to be interior minister. After Rabin’s assassination, Shimon Peres made Barak foreign minister.

  Peres lost the next election, and Barak became the Labor Party leader in 1996, defeating Netanyahu in 1999 and controversially pulling out of Israel’s costly Lebanon security zone.

  Barak provides a detailed description of Israel’s efforts at Camp David in 2000, with Arafat refusing all proposals and making none. Blamed for the summit’s failure, Barak lost to Ariel Sharon in 2001. After Sharon’s stroke, Olmert made Barak defense minister. He continued under Netanyahu from 2009 to 2013.

  “My Country” includes at least two errors, one saying “either of the mosques” on the Temple Mount. Atop the mount is only one, Al-Aqsa; the Dome of the Rock is a shrine. The other error is a howler.

  As defense minister, Barak sought U.S. bunker-buster bombs and the lease of airborne tankers, not mentioning their use against Iran. But that purpose didn’t escape President George W. Bush; Barak writes that in a meeting with himself and Olmert, Bush said: “I’m a former F-16 pilot. I know how to connect the dots.”

  No, he wasn’t. Bush was a Texas Air National Guard F-102 pilot who stopped flying in 1972 and quit in 1973. The F-16 entered service in 1979.

  Neither error diminishes an insightful book.

• Haaretz
  https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ehud-barak-lifts-the-lid-on-israeli-army-s-special-ops-1.5963318
  Word count: 2672

  Ehud Barak Lifts the Lid on Israeli Army’s Most Elite Unit’s Special Ops
  And some other hair-raising operations that did not get the green light

  Anshel PfefferSendSend me email alerts
  Apr 01, 2018 8:59 PM
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  Ehud Barak (third from left) with friends from Sayeret Matkal.
  Ehud Barak (standing third from left) with friends from Sayeret Matkal.Eyal Toueg / Reproduction
  Why was Israel's attack on Syria's reactor suddenly cleared for publication?
  The name is Gino, Yossi Gino, the closest thing to James Bond Israel had
  The Israeli public is entitled to know more about matters of war
  All the attention a week and a half ago was on the lifting of the military censor’s gag order on the official record of Israel’s September 2007 attack on Syria’s nuclear reactor. But the event that spurred the decision to let the Israeli media report on the strike – the publication in Israel of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s memoirs last week and the release of Ehud Barak’s autobiography in the United States this May – heralds the unveiling of other key Israeli operations, some that have remained under wraps for over 50 years.

  We have former Prime Minister Barak’s new book, “My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace” (St. Martin’s Press), to thank for that. The members of the ministerial committee chaired by Benjamin Netanyahu that vets books by former senior officials seems to have let their former colleague Barak go where no Israeli author was allowed before.

  It wasn’t favoritism, though. The story of Israel’s most secret intelligence-gathering operations, which laid the ground for victory in the Six-Day War and could possibly have prevented the disaster of the Yom Kippur War, is also Barak’s personal story. As one of the first officers of the Sayeret Matkal, he led those first operations deep within Syria and Egypt. In his book, Barak offers for the first time a firsthand and detailed account of the intelligence operations he participated in.

  For many years, the most famous operations involving the Sayeret Matkal were the “noisy” ones, those that made headlines immediately after they took place – like the rescue of the hostages at Entebbe in 1976 and the assassination of PLO leaders in Beirut in 1973.

  Ehud Barak (second from left) after storming the hijacked Sabena airliner that landed in Ben Gurion Airport, 1972.
  Ehud Barak (second from left) after storming the hijacked Sabena airliner that landed in Ben Gurion Airport, 1972.Ron Ilan / REUTERS
  But Israel’s most elite unit was not founded originally to carry out hostage rescues and counterterror operations. The intelligence operations that Barak participated in remained top secret for decades. And while some of the details have been published in the past – in the Israeli media and “from foreign sources” – Barak’s is the first full version of what the Sayeret Matkal did in its early years.

  It was almost a freelance initiative of a handful of veteran officers to train a small group of special-forces operatives capable of placing and maintaining listening devices deep behind enemy lines. While these commandos were of course rigorously trained in all manner of combat scenarios, most of their training was focused on carrying out their mission without being detected and leaving no trace.

  Ehud Brog (he would Hebraize his name to Barak over a decade later), a scrawny kibbutznik with an aversion to authority, was drafted into the unit in 1960 when its original nucleus included less than 20 men. He had originally been intended to serve in an armored infantry battalion, but was plucked out of it when the unit’s officers heard a rumor about a kid who had made his own lock-picking tools that let him steal ammunition from his kibbutz’s weapons bunker, and who had an uncanny knack for long-range navigation.

  Two traumas had preceded the awarding of the Sayeret Matkal its first mission. The first was in 1954, when a small team of paratroopers and soldiers from the Golani Brigade were captured by the Syrian army in the Golan Heights trying to replace the batteries of a listening device. They were released only a year and a half later after one of them, Uri Ilan, had taken his life in jail. Ilan’s death was a national trauma in young Israel and David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, forbade the Israel Defense Forces to carry out any more cross-border operations.

  Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu as soldiers in Sayeret Matkal.
  Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu as soldiers in Sayeret Matkal.GPO
  Barak and Maj. Amnon Lipkin Shahak.
  Barak and Maj. Amnon Lipkin Shahak, another future IDF chief of staff.GPO
  The second trauma came in February 1960, a few months after the unit had been formed but long before it had the capabilities or the green light to launch operations. Almost comically, at a cocktail reception, Israel’s Military Intelligence chief learned from the CIA station chief that Egypt had moved two entire divisions into the Sinai Peninsula.

  What became known as the Rotem Alert did not lead to war, but it highlighted Israeli intelligence’s blind spots. Barak details in his book how the handful of first recruits to the Sayeret Matkal spent over two years trekking through Israel on grueling nighttime navigations with only a compass and the stars for guidance. He details how they trained endlessly and evaded Israel’s desert scouts until they were deemed by their officers ready. Barak himself had time to become the first of the original recruits to go for officer training, sign on for two additional years of service and return to the unit. And they were still waiting for the go-ahead.

  The authorization for the first operation came only in August 1963, when Barak was ordered to plan and command an incursion at the head of a five-man team that three weeks later would climb up the Golan and install a listening device on a Syrian army communications line. In what would become standard practice for many Sayeret Matkal operations, before receiving the final green light to risk five men in enemy territory, the young lieutenant was sent to brief the IDF chief of staff, Tzvi Tzur.

  Teaching Barak a lesson

  In his book, Barak gives the first detailed account of the operation that would lead to a historic and strategic breakthrough for Israeli intelligence. Each carrying an Uzi and two grenades, the members of the team crossed the border after nightfall north of Kibbutz Dan. They had orders to return by 1:15 A.M., but on the way they had to traverse three sleeping Syrian soldiers and the Banias River, still swollen from the winter’s rainfall. It was deeper and wider than expected at the spot Barak had chosen to cross. When the order came over the radio to return, he told his men to switch the thing off.

  Once they installed the device at the top of a telephone pole, they returned to Israeli territory undetected, but three hours late. They were greeted at the border by the Military Intelligence chief, Meir Amit. The next day, a crate of French champagne arrived at the Sayeret Matkal’s base compliments of Chief of Staff Tzur – two bottles had been removed “to teach Ehud Brog not to shut off his field radio.”

  Lessons were learned – such as the need to draw a wider berth around Syrian bases and pay more attention to seasonal events such as swollen rivers, but the initial operation served as a template for further Sayeret Matkal missions over the following months in the Golan. The intelligence that would be gathered by the devices planted would be a key factor less than four years later when the IDF captured the Golan Heights in the last 36 hours of the Six-Day War.

  But the Syrian front wasn’t the main one Israel was concerned about in the 1960s. To the south in Egypt was the largest Arab army and a president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, intent on unifying the Arab world against Israel. Tapping into the communications of the Egyptian army deep in Sinai would take a much larger and more powerful device, not one that could be carried on the backs of commandos. At the time, the Israel Air Force was acquiring its first large transport helicopters, Sikorsky S-58s, and it was decided that Barak would lead the Sayeret Matkal’s first major helicopter-borne mission.

  Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, July 1986.
  Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, July 1986.AFP
  “Even now,” he writes, “most of the details of how we planned to tap into the Egyptians’ communications remain classified.” But he still gives a good deal of new details, including the fact that geologists were consulted to help work out the best locations and methods were developed to hide the tapping devices from Egyptian desert scouts. Also, on the test run of the operation, unbeknown to the Israeli telephone company, Matkal had tapped into Israel’s phone networks and, due to the use of insufficiently waterproofed components, put thousands of phones in southern Israel out of action.

  To transport the device from the helicopter’s landing spot to the place where it was installed, a rickshaw made from airline-standard tubing was devised, which could be pulled over the desert floor by two men. Barak will still not say how the device was connected to the Egyptian communication line and hidden in early 1964, but he does reveal that it took all five men on the team to make sure it was installed before they had to rendezvous with the helicopter. The rendezvous almost failed, as thick fog had descended over the desert and the helicopter nearly crashed when it drifted just before landing.

  This was Barak’s first mission that was approved by the new chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, and would be followed by similar operations. The devices gave Israeli intelligence such a clear picture of the Egyptian military movements that, after the Six-Day War, a cover story had to be concocted of an Israeli agent in the Egyptian army to explain how the IDF ground forces in 1967 had complete knowledge of the enemy’s movements.

  The third secret operation to install listening devices Barak described in detail took place in early 1970, after the Six-Day War in which Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula; the listening devices the Sayeret Matkal had planted there before the war were useless. This operation would need larger helicopters and include diversionary attacks on Egyptian installations to hide the true mission.

  The helicopters flew over the Suez Canal – therefore into mainland Egypt on the African continent – and, as in the previous missions, Barak’s team found installing and hiding the device much more difficult than expected; the mission was nearly aborted midway.

  But the generals in the command post radioed that more time was available, and the work was completed before sunrise. “For the first time since we’d captured Sinai, Israel was again receiving real-time communications from inside Egypt,” Barak wrote. These devices and others installed following operations were the “special sources” that Israel used sparingly to minimize the risk of detection. On the eve of the Yom Kippur War, they were switched on for only a very short period, denying the IDF what could have been crucial intelligence of the Egyptian-Syrian plan to attack in October 1973.

  Operations not taken

  In April 1971, Barak became Sayeret Matkal’s commander and despite some opposition from the General Staff, began broadening the unit’s portfolio beyond cross-border intelligence-gathering into more offensive commando, sabotage and counterterror operations.

  Barak as a young commander during an army inspection.
  Barak as a young commander during an army inspection.GPO
  In his book, he provides no more details on the “silent” missions, but these new noisy operations could not be hidden – though the unit, whose very existence was not formally acknowledged in the Israeli media until the early 1990s, was never referred to by name at the time.

  While Barak provides some new details of these missions that are already well-known, he also writes about operations that were planned but not given the go-ahead. One of these was a plan to rescue Israeli pilots who had been shot down during the 1967-70 War of Attrition from prisons in Damascus and Cairo. The plan he details in the book was to land helicopters near Damascus and abduct Syrian officers from an officers’ club on the city’s outskirts, in order to exchange them for the prisoners.

  In Moshe Zonder’s 2000 book “Sayeret Matkal,” which remains the most complete history of the unit, a similar mission is described, one prepared in mid-1973 – this time to rescue Israeli prisoners from Abbasiya prison in Cairo. The mission was to be led by Barak’s deputy, Yoni Netanyahu. A team was assembled from the Sayeret Matkal and other special units, but after three months of training the plans had not yet been finalized when the Yom Kippur War broke out and the team was disbanded.

  Nearly 20 years later, Barak – by this time deputy chief of staff – was in charge of preparing Israel’s contingency plans for attacking Iraq’s Scud missile launchers during the 1991 Gulf War. Barak once again gives new details, saying that in addition to airstrikes, the IDF planned to land “500 to 600 soldiers” from Israel’s airborne units who “would take control of key areas and road junctions in western Iraq and start hunting and destroying” the Scud launchers.

  Barak also flew to London with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to secretly meet with Jordan’s King Hussein. In the meetings, in which a small number of senior officials took part, Hussein refused to allow Israeli planes to fly over Jordan. The two leaders finally met on their own, and afterward Shamir refused to say what agreement if at all had been reached.

  Another intriguing mention of a Sayeret Matkal operation that never came about regards the aftermath of the February 1994 massacre at Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs, where settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Muslim worshippers. Rabin, now prime minister, considered evicting the settlers from Tel Rumeida, one of the enclaves within Hebron. He asked Barak, now IDF chief of staff, whether this was operationally possible to do quickly. Barak’s plan was to send in a Matkal team in the middle of the night to seal off the area and allow a speedy eviction. Rabin hesitated and the order was never given. The settlers still live in Tel Rumeida.

  While many of these details were already known to Israeli military historians and journalists, and some have appeared on unauthorized websites, no Israeli has previously been allowed to go into such detail on the Sayeret Matkal’s missions. There is some historical justice in Barak, the commander and planner of these missions, being the first to shed light on them. But his account, just as that of his role as defense minister during the attack on the Syrian reactor in 2007, is naturally self-serving. Now that he has opened the door, it remains to be seen whether more objective writers will be allowed to furnish a more complete version for history.

  Barak’s office sent this response: "The article, on the details level, does not accurately reflect what will be published next month in the printed book. Barak recommends to all to wait patiently for the book itself. The book passed the Israeli Censorship and does not include any untold secrets or any material which might hurt our security."

• Asharq Al-Awsat
  https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1225866/ehud-barak%E2%80%99s-new-book-reveals-intelligence-operations-arab-countries
  Word count: 762

  Ehud Barak’s New Book Reveals Intelligence Operations in Arab Countries
  Tuesday, 3 April, 2018 - 12:15

  Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. (AFP)
  Tel Aviv – Asharq Al-Awsat
  Ehud Barak’s New Book Reveals Intelligence Operations, Assassination Plots in Arab Countries

  Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently finished his autobiography in which he revealed several Israeli intelligence and assassination operations, as part of his military activity in several Arab countries.

  Some of those operations have remained under wraps for over 50 years and are now revealed in his book, “My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace.”

  Chaired by Benjamin Netanyahu, the ministerial committee that reviews books by former senior officials allowed their former colleague to go ahead with publishing his memoir.

  Sources revealed that the book discusses the story of Israel’s most secret intelligence-gathering operations, which laid the ground for victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 and could possibly have prevented its defeat in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

  In one of Barak’s personal stories, he recalled leading his first operations deep in Syria and Egypt as one of the first officers of the Sayeret Matkal commandos.

  The authorization for the first operation came in August 1963, when Barak was ordered to plan and command an incursion of a five-man team into the Golan Heights to wire-tap a Syrian army communications line.

  In his book, Barak gives the first detailed account of the operation that led to a historic and strategic breakthrough for Israeli intelligence. Each member carried an Uzi gun and two grenades, and then crossed the border after nightfall north of Kibbutz Dan.

  They had orders to return by 1:15 A.M., but on the way they had to move passed three sleeping Syrian soldiers and the Banias River, which was deeper and wider than expected at the spot Barak had chosen to cross. When the order came over the radio to return, he told his men to switch it off.

  Once they installed the device at the top of a telephone pole, they returned to Israeli territory undetected, but three hours late. They were greeted at the border by the Military Intelligence chief, Meir Amit.

  The intelligence that would be gathered by the planted devices would be a key factor less than four years later when Israeli forces captured the Golan Heights in the last 36 hours of the Six-Day War.

  However, the Syrian front wasn’t Israel’s main concern in the 1960s. Egypt boasted the largest Arab army and a president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was determined to unify the Arab world against Israel.

  Tapping into the communications of the Egyptian army deep in Sinai would take a much larger and more powerful device, not one that could be carried on the backs of commandos. At the time, the Israeli Air Force received its first large transport helicopters, Sikorsky S-58s, and it was decided that Barak would lead the Sayeret Matkal’s first major helicopter-borne mission.

  “Even now,” he writes, “most of the details of how we planned to tap into the Egyptians’ communications remain classified.”

  He still gives a good deal of new details, including the fact that geologists were consulted to help work out the best locations to hide the tapping devices from Egyptian desert scouts.

  Barak did not mention how the device was connected to the Egyptian communication line and hidden in early 1964, but he does reveal that all five men made sure it was installed before they had to get back.

  This was Barak’s first mission that was approved by the new Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, and would be followed by similar operations.

  Early 1970, the third secret operation to install listening devices took place. Barak stated that this operation needed larger helicopters and included diversionary attacks on Egyptian installations to hide the true mission.

  The helicopters flew over the Suez Canal and installing and hiding the device was much more difficult than expected. The team nearly aborted midway, but the generals radioed that they had more time and the work was completed.

  “For the first time since we’d captured Sinai, Israel was again receiving real-time communications from inside Egypt,” Barak wrote.

  These devices and others installed were called the "special sources" that Israel used sparingly to minimize the risk of detection.