Former Sayeret Matkal commander recounts post‑service education plans and awards

A few weeks later, my term as commander ended. The handover to my successor, Giora Zorea, turned out to be more elaborate than my arrival, though not at my instigation. With both Talik and Avraham in attendance, Dado presented me with my fifth tza/ash. It was not for Beirut. Not for the operation against the Syrian officers, or the unprecedented access our intelligence missions were providing into Egypt’s military communications. Dado said it was for all of the above. And not just for leading the unit of which I’d been a part almost from the start. It was for my part in bringing it to maturity. When I replied, I am sure everyone knew I was speaking from the heart in saying that my every moment with Sayeret Matkal had been a privilege. And that this latest commendation was an award for the achievements the whole sayeret. Dado did me another good turn. As my stint as commander drew to an end, I knew what I hoped to do next in the army: to use my tank training to work my way up the command chain in the armored corps. But like past sayeret commanders, it was assumed I would first spend time at the US Marine Corps staff college in Quantico, Virginia. I had other ideas. I wanted to exercise other parts of my mind, by doing postgraduate work at a normal American university. Dado agreed. I still had to get accepted. The first step was to take the post-graduate entry exam, the GRE. There were two parts to it. The first involved mathematics and abstract thinking, the second English language. If my fate had rested on my English grade, I’d have ended up at Quantico. I finished in the 28" percentile. But in the other part, I was in the 99.6" percentile. I applied to four universities: Harvard, Yale, MIT and Stanford. Amazingly, I got accepted by all of them. I chose Stanford, mainly because it allowed a far greater latitude in choosing my program of study. Also, the weather. In early August 1973, Nava and I joined my parents and hers on a sunny afternoon in Mishmar Hasharon to celebrate Michal’s third birthday and say goodbye. We were heading to Palo Alto, California, with every expectation of two years of intellectual stimulation, new friends, new experiences and something approximating a more normal family life. My “other” family, the Israeli army, also had reason to believe a period of new possibilities lay ahead. The threat of terror remained, of course. There had also been a brief bout of 144 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011615