The courtyard of Lt. Col. (Res.) Y. (74) in Hod Hasharon is impressive in its beauty. Trees and flowers in a variety of rainbow colors along with magnificent works created by Billy, his wife. The interior of his house is also decorated accordingly. Thousands of music CDs .
Y. defines himself as a busy retiree, engaged in various startups, assisting Ethiopians due to his unique past, and also as a senior instructor at the Synagogue - the front landing unit, which aims to land planes in enemy countries, based on his many years of experience in the field. And that some of its details were never disclosed.Only a few institutional agents participated in these operations, which were of immense classification due to their risk.
In 1982, after serving as a fighter in the Shaked Regiment during the Six Day War, as a flight security guard in the days after the hijacking of an El Al plane to Algeria, short service in the Mossad, service as a fighter pilot in the IDF and work in the young Israeli high-tech industry, he became the Mossad commander in Sudan. Secret of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, in what later became known as the Red Sea dive site affair. , But according to Y. "The film does not represent anything.
"Anyone who knows what we did knows that the performances were much more special than the film."
Always landed in the morning, illustration photo: IDF Spokesman
"It was a bad enemy country, not a particularly friendly place, to say the least. We would go through Hamas training camps there. You live in enemy land, in full coverage, but the real heroes were the immigrants themselves. We had fun. We were paid, we dived with girls Beautiful from Switzerland and France, and we did the work.
"We started doing operations in the desert," Y. recalls the heroic operations to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
"We recruited young activists from Ethiopia and they worked inside the camp because a white person did not have the opportunity to enter the camps. Think of the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in an area the size of Gush Dan. We would tell them to bring Jews to a certain point, wadi or abandoned quarry, and after two hours For trucks on the way to the landing pad. "
"The ground in Sudan is not trivial for landing. True, it speaks, but when you start looking for hundreds of meters straight, without slopes and stones, it turns out that it is not easy even in a flat country. There were times I would go down to Sudan for a few weeks just to find landing sites "To the same place twice. In addition, there is a large movement of Bedouins, so there were cases where I would find a great place and after two weeks there was a tent."
Y. would go out into the field and find a suitable location for landing.
"The landings were always early in the morning. It was not trivial at all - to fly such a distance, at low altitude to find the landing. It is not like today with advanced systems - the navigators would lie on the floor with night vision to identify the position I marked. Think about level The training I created with the pilots - the Air Force commands the pilots would not land on a temporary landing pad if they had not landed on it before during the day, and here they had to land a plane thousands of miles from home without knowing the terrain.In the morning I would look at the sky "The heart was beating, it was not an easy event, which received the prime minister's approval. It was an amazing task, which each time succeeded."
A plane lands in an improvised landing pad, Photo: IDF Spokesman
For six years Y. carried out the classified activity, and then, in 1988, he ended his term in Sudan.
Due to his special role, he was later allowed to come to the CIS as a reservist in 1991. "I met the commander of the Lod Air Force Base (which later closed), Col. Yitzhak Brandt, and he told me that I was the most experienced person in landing planes. Rhino in the State of Israel.
There's a unit that's what he did, he reminded me, and that's a match from heaven.
Among other things, he served as the liaison with the special units.
Y. currently serves as a senior instructor in the front landing unit, and a fighter device for the heroic work.
YHQ has changed a lot today from the days I was in the institution and at the beginning of my days as a reservist in the unit.
"In my time as an agent for my staff, there were fighters and the HQs did not even cross the border. It was very strange. We would deal with special units in 1991 and they would look at us with a very crooked eye. Today we are on the same level as them."
Until a few years ago, Y. went on field operations, but today he serves as a guide and prepares the young fighters.
"I take dirt testers for a week in the field and grind them to shape - works, improves. I am one of the people who authorizes the dirt testers to higher ranks. Today everyone is addicted to a GPS device. They forget the field. This is my specialty - field knowledge, geology, soil types, "Geometry, topography, what the area will do to the plane, whether it will jump or land properly. This is the Torah."
Last April, Y. received a letter of appreciation from Air Force Commander Amikam Nurkin for making above and beyond his contribution to the State of Israel - from his activities in Sudan to the front landing unit.
"Commanded secret operations in an enemy country and trained new generations of commanders and soldiers," it read.
