Results for “Avraham Yoffe”

… the Soviets, invaded, overran and divided Poland. Two of my mother’s three sisters fled to Moscow. Her teenage brother Avraham went underground, joining the anti-Nazi partisans. All three would survive the war. Yet in the autumn of 1940, the rest of her family found themselves i...

…e country, with watchtowers on each corner of the outer walls. The northern commander was an equally forbidding figure. Avraham Yoffe had served in the British artillery in the Second World War and the Golani Brigade in 1948. He used to joke with other officers that while they lo...

… But the next morning, a package arrived at the Sayeret Matkal base from one of the few people who did. We opened it in Avraham’s office. It was a nearly full carton of champagne: real, French champagne, since it would be years before Israel’s embryonic wine industry produced any...

…d, any prospect of our playing any significant part. The fact that my own role was slightly less peripheral was due to Avraham Arnan. He phoned me almost as soon as we’d got news of the Israeli air victory, and told me he had been told to take a few men from the sayeret across t...

…nd my nightly stock-taking, I'd somehow missed an obvious detail in our planning. When we got back to the sayeret base, Avraham was waiting for us. “Well?” he asked Meir. “They don’t need me,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.” It was not just a source of reassurance for me...

…nd my nightly stock-taking, I'd somehow missed an obvious detail in our planning. When we got back to the sayeret base, Avraham was waiting for us. “Well?” he asked Meir. “They don’t need me,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.” It was not just a source of reassurance for me...

…he base where I’d reported a decade earlier, as a 19-year-old fresh from fironut, when the sayeret was still a gleam in Avraham Arman’s eye. Now, I was about to become the first of his successors to have been chosen from within the unit itself. As I called together the officers t...

…d created, but of Jewish civilization, our heritage, our moral and ethical foundation. As I drove back to Tel Aviv with Avraham and the others on the morning of fourth day of the war, we heard Israeli ground forces were consolidating their hold there as well. After dropping Avra...

…d created, but of Jewish civilization, our heritage, our moral and ethical foundation. As I drove back to Tel Aviv with Avraham and the others on the morning of fourth day of the war, we heard Israeli ground forces were consolidating their hold there as well. After dropping Avra...

…attack. But they decided the price of possible failure was simply too high. Sayeret Matkal was born three years later. Avraham was still part of the unit running low-level agents in Syria and Lebanon, but his commander reluctantly agreed to allow him to set up his new intelligen...

Avraham’s Palmach comrade from 1948. Yet winning over the

…attack. But they decided the price of possible failure was simply too high. Sayeret Matkal was born three years later. Avraham was still part of the unit running low-level agents in Syria and Lebanon, but his commander reluctantly agreed to allow him to set up his new intelligen...

…ost of the men were Sephardi Jews. For a unit like ours, with the aim of undertaking secret missions in Arab countries, Avraham believed that a background in Arabic culture and language was an important asset. I was the sayeret’s only lock-picker. But all of us had been recruited...

…al journalist, Dan Margalit. Still, it would place Shimon and Bibi side by side. We spent two days prepping Peres, with Avraham Burg — an early Peace Now supporter, former Peres aide and Knesset member — standing in for Bibi. Avraham played the role well, anticipating the lines o...

…ns storage. Five tents. Two field toilets. And a single-story brick structure with a tin roof. It contained offices for Avraham Arnan, a couple of other officers and a secretary, a kitchenette and a room for storing weapons. This was the home of Sayeret Matkal, although the first...