information. But in talking with his wartime friends, he realized this kind of

information. But in talking with his wartime friends, he realized this kind of low-level intelligence could never address the real need for Israel: to ensure we had early warning if Syria or Lebanon, Jordan or Egypt, were preparing to go to war against us. He began toying with the idea of training a small force of Israeli soldiers to go on cross-border intelligence missions. The initial response from the kirya — military headquarters in Tel Aviv — was so frustrating that anyone else would have given up. None of the generals saw any reason to believe his scheme would work. But the real obstacle was their continuing trauma over what had happened the last time Israeli soldiers crossed the border on an intelligence mission. It had happened in 1954, and it ended in a failure even more serious than Rotem. The target was the Golan Heights, inside Syria. The special technology unit attached to military intelligence had developed a bugging device designed to be placed on a telephone pole on the Golan. The task of installing it was given to the most decorated, and respected, commando unit in the army: Company A in Sharon’s paratroop battalion, led by its commander, Meir Har-Zion. On a spring night in 1954, Har-Zion led his team onto the Golan. They rigged the bugging unit to the telephone pole, buried the bulky transmitter and made their way back. And it worked. Israeli intelligence could listen in to military communications on the Heights. The hitch as that the batteries had to be replaced every few weeks. Several more times, Meir and his men sneaked back into Syria to keep the bug working. But as commander of Company A, Meir was a key part of Israel’s anti-fedayeen operations. The last thing Moshe Dayan wanted to risk was seeing him captured while trying to replace a few batteries. So he shifted the task to a regular unit from the Golani Brigade. In December 1954, a handover mission was organized. Three men from Company A, including one of Meir’s sergeants, joined three from the Golani Brigade. But they didn’t even hold a joint exercise before setting off. There was also a lack of clarity about who was in charge. Though the Golani commander was nominally the senior officer, only the Company A men had any first-hand experience of this kind of mission. A half-mile onto the Heights, they were intercepted by a Syrian soldiers. If this had been a Company A operation, the response would have been automatic. They would have wheeled, opened fire and attacked. But when the Syrians ordered the Golanis to drop their weapons, one of them did, and the Company A men followed suit. They were all taken to Damascus, held in solitary confinement, beaten and tortured. o/7 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011528