Aaron Cohen speaks on U tube articles about the current situation. He is still promoting this book and I realized that I had already read his book before I started this blog
25/5/19 Behind enemy lines with a commando in one of the worlds most elite counter terrorist units- 1995 to 1998
This is an autobiography. The book starts with the Dizingoff bombing in Tel Aviv on 4th March 1996. He happened to be at a flat with his mate an officer in Duvduvanim nearby and the 2 of them went and took charge of helping until the ambulance and police took over. (This is moving to me as I knew 2 of the 16 who died that day, they were South African immigrants a mother and her daughter.) He was born in Montreal and his parents divorced and he was moved around to Florida then LA where his mothers career took off as a scriptwriter and she married Abby Mann. For his bar mitzvah year he returned to his father in Montreal.
Abby Mann - Avraham Goodman 1927 to 2008 wrote the script for Judgement in Nuremburg 1961 by Stanley Kramer.
In Hollywood he met the actors who came to their house to discuss the scripts. Most Hollywood kids were wealthy spoilt brats like him and when he got into trouble his mother sent him off to military school Canada near Niagara. Here he was able to find himself, as rules were set down.
Back home he met an Israeli general who told him if he gets to Israel not to overdo how great he is. He arrived on Kibbutz Hazorea to do an ulpan and worked in the kitchen but met the people in the fish breeding who were officers in the Matkal and managed to work with them in work physically exhausting. In the army he refused to be taken into ordinary infantry, phoned an old lady who knew everyone and got into the gibush at Wingate. He survived this even with a sprained ankle.
Matkal would not take him security only wanted born Israeli's of known families but he was sent to training that would be Duvduvan.(undercover, counter terror)
During the training they keep working on them physical and phycological to eliminate, and those were sent off to paratroopers or infantry. The volunteers for these elite unites came mostly from secular idealist but as a result of the 73 and 82 wars these types wanted the good life offered abroad and the kippa sruga (knitted skullcaps of general religious) were the one who showed this initiative. There was also a unit of physically strong Sfaredim (Jews of Eastern origin) who were not fighting material but by having then next to high class units had some effect. They were now trained on weapons for urban warfare, everything from handguns to small Uzi's folding F16 and Kalashnikovs. They learn Krav Maga developed by Imi Lichtenfeld to protect Jewish youth against anti-Semitic thugs in Bratislava in the 1930.
Then they had lessons on disguise some could grown beards other dressed as women. They had to get cheap Chinese copies of clothes, shoes as certain brands gives one away. A cosmetician taught makeup.
Initially he guarded the surrounding while the operation was on later he went in. Once there was shooting from inside so they put an RPG in the wanted person was killed so they could not get him alive to question. Once he had to meet a British educated Hamas organizer and posed as an American reporter in a café till the rest of the team pounced.
He says that Fatah and Hamas are more like armed mafia's gangs than political movements and people are left very little free will.
They found out that Abu Jihad was to be at a wedding in Nablus and 2 men went in as quests grabbed him and carried him out. This was such a Hamas neighbourhood that the locals felt too secure.
After his 3 year stint Aaron returned to LA but was in a state of post traumatic stress back home. Eventually he met Israelis there working in security many without green cards. When word got out that he was available he was in demand and later started training police.
He ends the book explaining that America after 9/11 is not mentally equipped to deal with a terrorist problem and Islamic terror had long term goals and has time. Later he took part in war movies.
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