A soldier goes into battle thinking it won't happen to him. That makes it possible to face death. It should not happen to anyone. 'But if it does, at least it won't be me.' That's what I thought. Now I knew better. As the officer in charge, I was the last person here who should be wounded. But as my strength ebbed away, and the sensations of my body diminished, I let go of those thoughts. The shooting around me continued, but nothing mattered anymore. I said farewell to the world, ready to die. Still on my feet, I let my hand finally drop the futile effort to stem the bleeding at my throat. A hot blast of desert air seared my throat, surprising me as it filled my lungs, shocking me with the realization I would live -- if I survived the swarm of bullets around me...
"In a single stroke, my perceptions of the IDF and its strength, and of my own invincibility had changed forever. At Karameh I understood my own vulnerability, as well as the IDF's. Since then, before every battle, every operation, and every project I began, I have seen Karameh in my mind's eye, and planned to avoid its mistakes. At Karameh I learned to learn, and the first thing I learned was that if the IDF could fail so badly, peace was still a long way away."
Col. Moshe "Muki" Betser (ret.) was born in Israel's Jezreel Valley, and grew up in Nahalal, the heart of Israel's aristocracy. He went into the army a year before the Six Day War, was the lead Sayeret Matkal officer to break into the Entebbe terminal in 1976, and he founded Israel's airborne commando unit, Shaldag. Muki was the officer at the very tip of the IDF's spear, helping to plan and execute some of the best known counter-terrorism military raids of the last 35 years.
Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Sayeret Matkal's most famous action, the July 4 1976 rescue raid on the airport at Entebbe, Uganda, Secret Soldier chronicles Betser's involvement in the El Al "air marshall" program, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and several successful and unsuccessful hostage/terrorist crises of the late 20th century. He was thrice personally assigned the task of getting Arafat, in 1968, 1972, and 1982. He also was a fervent supporter of peace process, and has remained so throughout the intifada. He was among the first to sign the Ayalon/Nusseibeh petition.
Muki undertook an entirely new career after he retired from the army in 1986. He began working as a community builder, helping groups of families who band together, to move from the idea, through the planninig and bureacucracy and contractors to the fruition of the neighborhood. In other words, Muki became a professional settler -- but he refused to do any work over the Green Line. He coordinated the creation of several bedroom suburbs of Haifa, mostly north of the Jezreel Valley into the Galilee. A graduate of Haifa University in geography, he began working with Dr. Yossi Leshem, world famous for his expertise on bird migration, on an idea for a high school focused on ecology, and saving the environment. Their school, at Maagan Michael, is due to open in the school year begining in the fall of 2005.
Get one or all of the books in the
Avram Cohen Mystery Quartet
"Having created a highly intelligent detective to handle the brainwork in this series, Mr. Rosenberg does not waste that shrewd and subtle mind." -- --New York Times Book Review
Crimes of the City The first book in the Avram Cohen Quartet, in which the veteran Jerusalem detective investigates the murder of two Rusian nuns and uncovers the Jerusalem Syndrome, a mysterious psychosis affecting the susceptible in that holy city. The New York Times Notable thriller of 1991 Originally published by Simon&Schuster, and Penguin paperback, and translated into German, Dutch, Romanian, and Japanese, Shown is the Poisoned Pen Press 2nd edition cover More about Crimes of the City, including the first chapter.
The Cutting Room Out of print in both hardcover and paperback (But possibly available in a used edition from Amazon
the second book in the quartet finds Cohen unhappily retired, on his way to Hollywood to visit his boyhood friend, like Cohen, a Dachau survivor. But when he arrives, he discovers a suicide that is really a murder, and to find the killer, he must delve into his darkest memories of the concentration camp -- and understand the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Download it as an e-book for free in html here. After unzipping it to its own directory, start with the index.htm file. More about The Cutting Room, including the first chaper.
House of Guilt Between the Hebron Massacre and Rabin's assassination, Avram Cohen is emotionally extorted into a hunt for the missing heir to a fortune. Now a wealthy man from an unexpected inheritance, Cohen follows the case from the anarchy of Tel Aviv's night life to the zealotry of the settlements, and on the way is forced to look at his own failures -- and Israel's -- in a new light. More about House of Guilt, including the first chapter.
An Accidental Murder What appears to be an accident in the desert turns out to be the murder of Cohen's surrogate son, and by ignoring police pressure to stay away from the case, Cohen's investigation leads him to the Russian Mafia's innermost circles in Israel, and to a suprising conclusion about his own place in Israel, and the world. So far, the last of the Cohen books, An Accidental Murder is a profile of a man -- and a country -- trying to be normal in abnormal circumstances. More about An Accidental Murder, including the first chapter.
PLUSSecret Soldier: The True Life Story of Israel's Greatest Commando is the autobiography of IDF Col. (ret) Muki Betser, the hero of the Entebbe rescue raid, a pioneering veteran of Israel's air marshall defense forces, the Sayeret Matkal officer thrice assigned the job of getting Yasser Arafat -- yet a proponent of the peace process with the Palestinians -- and a warrior who went into battle knowing how to control his fear. His story is an epic, behind the senes account of Israel's war against terrorism, a dramatic story about life at the tip of the IDF's spear. More about Secret Soldier, including excerpts, and the author's introduction.
From 
Crimes of the City
The Cutting Room
House of Guilt
An Accidental Murder
Secret Soldier: The True Life Story of Israel's Greatest Commando
