Sayeret Matkal

Sayeret Matkal, elite commando unit of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) founded in 1957 by IDF officer Avraham Arnan, who petitioned the IDF General Staff for a combat unit in enemy territory to conduct top secret intelligence-gathering missions. Since its founding, the unit has carried out numerous hostage rescues and other counterterrorist operations.

Hostage rescues

Sayeret Matkal is well known for its participation in several spectacular hostage rescues. The unit freed hostages on a Sabena airliner at the Tel Aviv Airport in 1972; commandos disguised as maintenance personnel took control of the airliner from members of the Palestinian militant Black September Organization during “Operation Isotope.” In 1976 Sayeret Matkal worked with other Israeli Defense Force units to free hostages from an Air France plane that had been hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and flown to Entebbe, Uganda; it used a black Mercedes automobile that was a perfect copy of the Ugandan leader Idi Amin’s personal car, and the ruse fooled the local troops (see Entebbe raid). Rescue force leader Lieut. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Benjamin Netanyahu (who would later serve as Israel’s prime minister), was killed as he brought the hostages to safety.

Not all of Sayeret Matkal’s hostage rescues were as successful as the Sabena airliner and Entebbe operations. One hostage rescue mission undertaken at an Israeli school on May 15, 1974, went horribly wrong. Members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—a Marxist-Leninist organization associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and founded by Nayif Hawātmeh—took over a school in the northern town of Maʿalot, and dozens of teachers and students were taken hostage. When Sayeret Matkal stormed the school, DFLP members began firing at the hostages. At least 20 people, many of them children, were killed. Some of these victims were killed or wounded in the exchange of fire between Sayeret Matkal and the DFLP.

Counterterrorism operations

Sayeret Matkal also engaged in many counterterror attacks and assassinations. Sayeret Matkal commando Ehud Barak (who would serve as Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001) led a raid called Operation Spring of Youth into Lebanon in 1973. Disguised as a woman, Barak directed the unit to assassinate three Palestinian leaders. Barak, who had joined the unit while still in his late teens, rose to the leadership of Sayeret Matkal. Benjamin Netanyahu served under Barak in Sayeret Matkal. The unit was also credited with the assassination of PLO second-in-command Khalīl Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr, known as Abū Jihād, in 1988, and the purported kidnapping of Hezbollah’s spiritual leader Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid in July of 1989. Officially, Sayeret Matkal gunned down Abū Jihād inside his Tunis home; however, his assassination was also attributed to the Mossad, Israel’s secret service.

During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Sayeret Matkal undertook Operation Sharp and Smooth, intended to disrupt weapons smuggling. The following year, Sayeret Matkal was believed to be involved in reconnaissance missions in Syria, including the collection of soil samples, that preceded Operation Orchard, the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor.

Sayeret Matkal was at the centre of a different kind of controversy in 2003, when 13 of its members presented Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a resignation letter saying that they refused to continue assisting “the oppressive reign in the territories.”