Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG: Israel's Edge: The Story of The IDF's Most Elite Unit

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Israel's Edge: The Story of

The IDF's Most Elite Unit - Talpiot,

by Jason Gewirtz.

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At the outset one not only admires the subject of the book, but feels daunted at the prospect of reading further.

But as the book progresses into its fourth, fifth chapters, one begins to feel puzzled at just why the expectations aren't quite yet fullfilled; instead, it begins to read like an advertising pamphlet giving details, however factual.

In this it reminds one of the autobiography of an ex-president of US, which had not only no details of spicy sort, but even anything really personal, and instead read like a list of names of people he'd ever encountered.

Fair enough, of course, in the latter case. Here, though, it seems that the author did intend to write what one expects as one goes through the introduction, but was stopped due to needs of state confidentiality details.

Again, fair enough, as far as the author and the subject go, but the reader is disappointed nevertheless, if not left feeling cheated.

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"This is a country that needs a strong fighting force perhaps more than any nation in the world, and the army is idolized by its youth. In the years before their induction, motivated Israeli teenagers jockey for position, boosting their high school grades and preparing for special IDF induction tests. Hoping to earn invitations to enlist in the units they’ve set their sights on, thousands of young Israelis even sign up for physical fitness coaching and private pre-army training in order to prepare themselves for the rigorous physical IDF exams that will decide who is sent where.

"It used to be the air force that had first pick of these capable young men and women. They needed the brightest and most physically fit to fly complicated fighter jets, large transport planes and heavily armed silent attack helicopters – the fighting force that makes up the long arm of the Israeli Air Force. It was rare that anyone would say no to the air force. Like American boys who dreamed of becoming a baseball star, many Israeli boys hoped to grow up and serve their country by piloting an F16.

"If the air force wasn’t your goal, or if your eyesight wasn’t perfect, another highly desired spot was a place in Israel’s celebrated elite commando units such as Sayeret Matkal or the paratroopers, with their distinctive red boots that symbolize to everyone just how tough you are and how dedicated you are to your country.

"But in 1979 something began to change. While the air force and top ground units were still, and always will be, a very high priority for Israel, another unit – a secret unit – took over as top priority for the IDF."

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"This small, select group is expected to change the way Israel does battle. The country is counting on them to give the Israel Defense Forces an eternal edge over its enemies by developing the weapons and military hardware of the future.

"Since this unit became a part of the IDF, no other group of soldiers has had such a profound impact on Israel – on Israel’s defense doctrine, on how Israel’s weapons are developed and how they’re used.

"The military advantage these special graduates gave Israel didn’t end when their army service was over. Those who left the army often took what they did for the IDF and applied it to the Israeli economy, creating hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth and tens of thousands of jobs in Israel and beyond. They have dramatically helped give Israel an edge on the battlefield and in global business.

"This is their story, the story of Talpiot."

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"October 1973: “The source” tells his Mossad handler in London that war between Israel and its Arab neighbors is imminent. He’s been wrong before, but with all of the other signs on the Syrian and Egyptian sides of the border, it looks like this could be the real thing."

"Despite having that crucial information, Israel’s leadership decides not to act – fearing it will be blamed for firing the first shot and that Israel will thus lose critical support from the United States. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has warned Israel’s leaders – including Prime Minister Meir – that if war should break out, Israel had best make sure it isn’t the one who starts the fighting.

"At noon, October 5, Israeli military intelligence reports state, “The probability that the Egyptians intend to renew fighting is low. There is no change in our estimate of Syrian intentions.”

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"October 6, 1973 – Yom Kippur, the tenth of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, 5734. At 2:00 pm, Egypt attacks Israel. Syria follows suit a few minutes later."

"Confusion reigns from the northern tip of Israel in the Golan Heights to the Sinai desert in the south. Field commanders desperately try to stop the simultaneous advances from the north and south.

"Government leaders in Jerusalem are stunned into silence and worse, inaction, while army leaders in Tel Aviv initially dismiss reports of the attacks as exaggerations. It is impossible to believe their Arab enemies are capable of launching such swift and effective incursions. Didn’t these same Israeli officers brilliantly thrash six Arab armies just a few years earlier? Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the highest ranking military official in the country, leads his closest advisers to believe that there is no problem; the situation is under control and the Israel Defense Forces will quickly turn the tide."

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"October 6, 1973 – Yom Kippur, the tenth of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, 5734. At 2:00 pm, Egypt attacks Israel. Syria follows suit a few minutes later."

"Confusion reigns from the northern tip of Israel in the Golan Heights to the Sinai desert in the south. Field commanders desperately try to stop the simultaneous advances from the north and south.

"A shaken Dayan is set to deliver a similar message to the nation that night. But one of the newspaper editors fears that the general will further erode morale and alarm everyone in the country. He reaches Prime Minister Meir and advises her to have another high-ranking military officer make the address to the nation."

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"Many nations that previously had supplied arms to Israel cut off arms shipments due to Arab threats. This was especially true of France, Israel’s main weapons supplier before 1967. The French were told that if they supplied Israel with weapons, the Arabs would cut off oil shipments to France. The United States picked up some of the slack, but not all of it, and Israel was left without a major weapons supplier.

"At the same time, Arab nations – especially Egypt and Syria – were showered with arms by the Soviet Union, as the USSR tried to strengthen its hold in this complicated, energy rich, and critical part of the world. In addition to its immense success in resupplying their armies, Egypt and Syria made strides in training crews to man new weapons systems and rapidly advanced in planning strategy."

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"That smugness came to a swift end when war broke out in 1973. In the opening days of fighting, Israel lost forty-nine planes (compared to forty-six planes during the entire Six-Day War). By the time the Yom Kippur war ended in late October, Israel had lost almost a fifth of its air force. Almost all of those planes lost by the Israeli Air Force were shot down by Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles. The Russian SAMs were so proficient that Israeli pilots would call them “flying telephone poles,” alluding to the wires that could snag a low-flying fighter jet – wires that were impossible to evade at a low altitude.

"Those Soviet SAMs were so new and sophisticated, no air force in the world could dodge them. The Israeli military came to the shocking realization that the IAF was no longer in complete control of the skies. Israel’s defense doctrine had been built on tanks and airplanes, and both were being soundly defeated by new technology owned by the Arabs."

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"Israel’s high command had some knowledge of the Sagger, learned from American fighting experiences in Vietnam. But high-ranking Israeli officers did not believe Arab fighters would be strong enough or brave enough to confront Israeli tanks. They knew that in one-on-one battle an Israeli tank crew could usually defeat its Egyptian or Syrian counterpart. Israel’s tank crews were generally better educated and better trained than Arab crews; moreover Israel’s tanks were more accurate and could fire from a longer distance.

"But they had not considered the Egyptian army’s ability to use the sophisticated Saggers, and Israeli tank crews were caught totally unprepared. After stealthily crossing the canal, the Egyptians set up shop, hiding behind sand dunes and setting up traps that would easily ensnare formidable Israeli tank units.

"Military experts later confirmed that “the Sagger operator would find it much easier to hit a tank than the other way around, and at ranges that matched the tanks” (Rabinovich, page 36). The large Israeli tanks made inviting targets for Sagger marksmen: Egyptian specialists would lock onto Israeli armor more than a mile away, fire and destroy tank after tank with deadly accuracy. In contrast, Israelis searching for Sagger crews in the vast desert sand could rarely locate them. This new element to the ground war would cost Israel dozens of tanks in the opening days of fighting."

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"At the same time, the air force was planning an operation to try to destroy Egypt’s Soviet made anti-aircraft batteries. Minutes before the mission was set to launch, Dayan contacted Benny Peled, commander of the Israeli Air Force, and called it off, diverting all planes to the north to stop the Syrian advance. His logic was that there was only sand in the Sinai between Israel proper and Egyptian tanks in the south. In the north, Israeli civilians were about to be in Syrian range: without the air force, those population centers, including Haifa, were doomed.

"During the 5:00 am conversation with Peled on October 7, Dayan said, “If our planes are not attacking by noon the Syrians will reach the Jordan Valley.” Then for the first time Dayan used a phrase that he would repeat in the coming days to the dismay of all who heard him. “The Third Temple,” he told Peled, “is in danger” (Rabinovich, page 175).

"“The Third Temple” was, and is still, code to many representing modern-day Israel. The first two Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed in ancient times; the first by the Babylonians in the year 586 BCE, the second by the Romans in the year 70 CE. To many secular Israelis, as well as Jews all over the world, today’s Israel is the “Third Temple.”

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"The intelligence failures that led to Israel’s early problems in the Yom Kippur War were dramatic and are still referred to today, more than forty years after the war, but the war wasn’t a total surprise to everyone in Israel. Some intelligence officers had seen signs that war was imminent. Soviet advisers and diplomats had moved their families out of the country in the days before October 6. There were widespread troop mobilizations in both Egypt and Syria; Arab troops were on the move, en masse."

"In modern warfare, the side that fires first often has the upper hand. Waiting to be attacked is especially risky for a tiny country like Israel, which is only sixty miles wide at its broadest point. At its narrowest point, Israel is roughly ten miles wide. Even a moderate thrust by the enemy could cut the country in half in the first hours of any war."

"When the shooting stopped and cease-fire agreements were signed three weeks later, Israeli citizens, the government and army woke up to a bitter reality. They were not invincible.

"Two thousand six hundred fifty-six Israeli soldiers had been killed. Almost nine thousand others lay wounded. The backbone of the IDF – its formidable tank force – had lost two hundred of its three hundred tanks in the Sinai in the first twenty-four hours of the war. Scores of Israel’s fighter planes were gone."

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"The trauma of the Yom Kippur War and the realistic fear that another war could mean extinction lingered. In the war’s aftermath, the entire military establishment and political leadership were forced to resign. The prime minister and Defense Minister Dayan both left eight months after the war ended. Key players in intelligence and in the IDF were ousted. For a nation born out of the ashes of the Holocaust to be threatened in such a way has a deep, scarring and lasting impact that affects every aspect of public life. A country of this size, surrounded by so many enemies with much larger armies and with suppliers like the Soviet Union, simply could not risk another war such as this. For years, Israel existed in a state of quiet tension and nobody really knew how to return to the sense of security most of the population had felt just after the Six-Day War."

"It was not long after the devastating Yom Kippur War that two professors at Hebrew University had an idea to give Israel that qualitative edge it so desperately needed (and still needs today) to survive. Their goal was to rearm Israel with enterprising minds, a weapon no army could defeat or suppress. Those minds would supply Israel with advanced weapons ahead of anyone in the world.

"But the professors’ idea went beyond weapons. The concept was also to train those young minds to come up with new and better ways to monitor the enemy and to outsmart it.

"The inspired proposal wouldn’t just help fortify Israel for the next war. Their innovation gave Israel the lead it maintains today, four decades after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the edge Israel will have over its enemies for decades to come."

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"When the air-raid sirens began on October 6, 1973, Hebrew University professor of physics Shaul Yatziv knew the government would never call for a mock air raid on Yom Kippur. Something awful and unthinkable was happening.

"Most Israelis had heard word of threats coming from Egypt and Syria, but like the government and the army, the civilians in the cities, villages and kibbutzim throughout the country knew little about Arab intentions. But when the silence of Yom Kippur was broken by siren blasts, and radio announcers calmly but urgently began reading the codes to mobilize reservists, it could mean only one thing: war."

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"Yatziv was a full professor at Hebrew University, part of the university’s Faculty of Natural Sciences; in 1973 he was conducting research on optical lasers and spectroscopy, the study of how matter reacts to radiated energy and vice versa."

"In most countries, residents under attack run away from the fighting. But when war breaks out in Israel, Israelis living abroad often run toward the fighting. They return from wherever they’re living, working or vacationing. When the war broke out in 1973, international carriers cancelled all service to the Middle East, but El Al flights were filled with Israelis rushing to get home to help, to serve and to fight."

" ... Felix Dothan was not a native of Israel. He was born Felix Deutsch in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1924.

"He had seen the dark side of life as a European Jew in his youth. Shortly after Yugoslavia had been occupied by the Germans, Felix and his classmates were told that the next day they were to assemble in the forest, rather than report to school. Felix’s father refused to give his permission and Felix stayed home. They later learned that Nazis and their Yugoslavian collaborators had shot four hundred of his classmates to death."

" ... Hidden by gentiles till the end of the war, he finished high school and started at the University of Zagreb, studying electrical engineering.

"But a resurgent wave of anti-Semitism in Yugoslavia – and the realistic fear of being stuck behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain forever – propelled his family to move to Palestine while they still could. They arrived in 1948."

" ... After the cease-fire in 1949, he scratched out a living as a fisherman while continuing his studies in engineering and physics at the Technion in Haifa, graduating in 1951. (The Technion is Israel’s version of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.)

"He immediately took a position at the precursor to Israel’s now-famous Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in Jerusalem. The exact nature of his job remains classified, but it involved advancing the production, testing and manufacturing of new weapons for the army."

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"After fulfilling his role as visiting professor at the University of California-Irvine in 1973, Professor Dothan made his way back home to Hebrew University. When he arrived, he was shocked to find the confident, happy country he had left in 1968 in the midst of a crisis. Israelis had lost trust in their government and in the military. The mood of his once-optimistic nation had turned decidedly pessimistic.

"Professor Dothan wanted to help get his beloved Israel back on its feet; the question was how could he give such a gift to his nation. He knew the answer had to do with research and education, not military muscle, but even if he could come up with a viable plan, how could he get a military machine that’s used to fighting wars with tanks and manpower to listen?

"It was time to revive collaboration with Professor Yatziv. Together, they went to work, starting with a position paper to submit to Israel’s top military officers. The paper states: “Concern for the fate of Israel and the wish to do the utmost to lower the number of casualties in future wars motivated us to submit a proposal that includes three important starting points that we do not have in existing research institutions.”"

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"The truth was that in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Elazar and all the top brass had troubles of their own that preoccupied them. Investigations into military fumbling during the war were being conducted by a special commission headed by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Shimon Agranat.

"The commission’s final report was issued in January 1975, and the impact on Israel’s political and military leadership was devastating. In addition to Golda Meir, many high-ranking officers – including Elazar – were forced to leave the army, along with several of their top deputies."

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"Begin moved into the prime minister’s office ready to make changes. Less than a year after taking office, Begin’s defense minister, Ezer Weizman, appointed Rafael Eitan as chief of staff, Israel’s highest ranking military officer. General Eitan was one of the Israeli officers credited with stopping the massive Syrian advance in the opening days of the Yom Kippur War. He had lost many of his soldiers in the fighting, but he escaped the war unscathed professionally.

"He had come from a disadvantaged economic background, but he revered education and saw it as the key to improving the prospects of less advantaged Israeli youth. With Eitan’s ascension to chief of staff, new life was pumped into Dothan and Yatziv’s drive to form an elite educated unit in the army."

"One day in 1978, after years of trying to break through the military’s roadblocks, Dothan and Yatziv were finally called to deliver their proposal directly to Eitan. They arrived, proposal in hand, and spent a few minutes with the diminutive but imposing general. Then they were asked to wait in an exterior office.

"General Eitan had his secretary ask Air Force Colonel Benjamin Machnes to come to his office immediately. ... "

"While Colonel Machnes was accepting the position as the army’s first representative in this new joint venture with Israeli academia, Yatziv and Dothan waited anxiously. Machnes let himself out of the office and introduced himself to the professors. He then told them, “Your project has been accepted, let’s get to work.” Yatziv and Dothan looked incredulous. “That’s it?” Machnes said yes, and the planning stages of Talpiot began right there outside of the chief of staff’s office.

"A short time later, General Ariel Sharon was named Minister of Defense. He was quickly brought up to speed on the project. He told Machnes, “Benji, this is a good thing that you’re doing.” By Machnes’s account, neither Sharon nor Eitan were particularly interested in becoming intimately involved in the program, but both were willing to gamble on it."

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"There was outright rejection, at first. None of the three universities wanted soldiers on their campus. An early leader of Talpiot started to think the program would never get the backing of a university. One day, as he was speaking to a friend who was a secretary at Hebrew University, she asked him what was wrong. He told her the story and she exclaimed, “You haven’t spoken to the right person!” Two minutes later, she came back with a vice president of Hebrew University, Professor Yo’ash Vedyah, who listened to the plan. He was so taken by it that he moved quickly to convince the board to broaden its scope, allowing Hebrew University to become the home of this new, mysterious and top secret army program. This was not the first nor the last time that an Israeli secretary knew more about making the right connections than the “experts.” It seems to be built into Israeli culture."

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"And to many generals, the thought of Talpiot becoming the army’s top priority was abhorrent. They needed fighters. They needed motivated young Israelis to fly planes and drive tanks; they needed boots on the ground, and they needed to secure the nation from the sea."

"Fortunately, the first commander of Talpiot was an indomitable personality, Dan Sharon. His war experience had taught him that there was a need for such a program well before the idea began taking off. On the first day of fighting in the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian warplanes fired Russian-made Kelt missiles at his base. The Kelts were precursors to today’s cruise missiles, boasting pinpoint accuracy. Major Sharon saw some of the reserve foot soldiers who were on his base come up with a quick way to defeat and deceive the Kelts by tapping into their Israeli radar systems that were on a similar frequency. “I thought, why are these guys here? They should be at the Ministry of Defense. At this point, I knew we were wasting resources and needed to do better.”

"Sharon was a long-time friend of Felix Dothan. (They used to meet on Fridays for a spot of brandy.) He was very eager to help Dothan, so when the program was finally accepted in 1978, Dothan asked him to lead Talpiot and Sharon accepted. He had just completed his PhD dissertation at Hebrew University on “the development of thinking and how one can improve his or her own thinking.”

"In order to take the Talpiot position, however, the army had to reactivate him. They did so immediately, with the higher rank of lieutenant colonel (sgan aluf, executive officer of a brigade)."

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" ... There was a colonel in intelligence who was responsible for their training, Sasson Sahaik. At first, he didn’t want to meet with me to discuss this issue, but ultimately he agreed. We sat in the Harley Café in Tel Aviv. I looked him straight in the eye, I told him this is about our existence here. Then I said, ‘Tell me – is it good for us to fight? Let’s compromise. We’ll find them together and we’ll ask each student what he wants. That’s it. If you have one or two who are exactly for you, take them. But in the end, let the candidates do what they want.’” Like many things in Israel, that informal deal was sealed with a handshake, and the truce held."

"In the early days, top generals also argued that army recruits shouldn’t be studying in a classroom. But Colonel Machnes made sure they were fighters first. He repeatedly pointed out to Talpiot detractors that “our Talpiot recruits had Israeli Air Force uniforms and I insisted they’d be an army unit, not students in the army. I ran it as a fighting unit.”"

"A few years after the program was created, it became common knowledge among senior officers in the IDF that Talpiot would be given the right of first refusal regarding all enlistees in the armed forces. If you were accepted into the training program for air force pilots but Talpiot’s commanders wanted you, you would go to Talpiot. You could be a fighter pilot later, but first you were going into Talpiot."

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"Professor Dothan could not have forged Talpiot without the vigorous support and cooperation of MAFAT. Because Talpiot and MAFAT are intertwined, it is important to understand the nature of this important facet of Israel’s military. Early on when the state was created, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wanted to keep the fighting men and women separate from the men and women who would control the money and the budget. He knew the army would play a large role in the makeup and development of the nation, but he wanted to separate the guns and the money in order to maintain a balance of power, and to disable any future general from controlling both the army and the budget at the same time. In Israel, the Ministry of Defense is generally operated by civilians who control the budget for military spending, and the IDF is run by Israel’s generals.

"MAFAT is the Hebrew acronym for Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure. The special department that was the precursor to MAFAT was just in the beginning stages of working together with Israel’s defense contractors when the Yom Kippur War broke out. That new research and development department had little to do with the fighting. During those three hard weeks of war, the head of research and development, Uzi Eilam, had taken over this crucial unit only a few weeks before the fighting began, and like most Israelis, he really had no idea the war was coming. During the war, he lent out his staffers to different army units to help in any way they could, yet he retained a core research and development team in case an assignment came their way."

"When Talpiot was founded, MAFAT soon took on leadership and administration of the program. Filled with some of the brightest engineering and military management minds in all of Israel, MAFAT has the final say on who gets into the program and who doesn’t. Though the air force is directly responsible for the cadets’ military training on a day-to-day basis, MAFAT is involved in the education of Talpiot students every step of the way. It helps nurture Talpiot’s young cadets by taking responsibility for their training and coursework."

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"While Kra-Oz was in high school, he and many other future Talpiot students were so far ahead of their instructors in computer science, they wound up teaching the classes. As the world adapted to computer-based life, teachers had trouble keeping up at first. It quickly became clear the tide was changing throughout the globe as students began teaching the teachers.

"Yet a big advantage emerged at Handassa’eem in those years. Many Russian immigrants with very sophisticated education couldn’t find work at their level in Israel; and so, many became teachers at Handassa’eem."

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CONTENTS

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Introduction

Chapter 1: A Devastating Force for Change

Chapter 2: Talpiot’s Founding Fathers

Chapter 3: Finding the Super Soldier

Chapter 4: Polishing the Program

Chapter 5: It All Starts in High School

Chapter 6: The World’s Fastest Learning Curve

Chapter 7: Training to Think Far Beyond the Box

Chapter 8: Reality Check

Chapter 9: Attack by Keyboard

Chapter 10: Making an Impact

Chapter 11: High-Tech Tinkerers

Chapter 12: Talpiots in Space

Chapter 13: Missile Command

Chapter 14: On a Mission

Chapter 15: Israel’s New Heroes

Chapter 16: “Talpiots Only Need Apply”

Chapter 17: Project Success

Chapter 18: Life Savers

Chapter 19: Reunion!

Chapter 20: The Future

Appendix: Timeline

A Salute from the Author

Acknowledgments

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REVIEW

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Introduction

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"This is their story, the story of Talpiot."

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February 08, 2023 - February 08, 2023.

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Chapter 1:

A Devastating Force for Change