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precedent of doing nothing would, in my view, be very serious. I recommended that he approve the operation, and Rabin agreed.

I attended the final briefing shortly afterwards. I was impressed by the determined faces of the men in the two sayeret teams. One of the officers was 23-year-old Nir Poraz, whom I remembered from operational briefings in the kirya on previous sayeret missions. Wachsman was being held in a room on the first floor. The commandos would simultaneously detonate explosives on three doors: at the front, on the side, and a third one leading through a kitchen to the room where the kidnappers had their hostage. The attack began fifteen minutes before the Hamas deadline. The explosive charges went off, but only the one in the front blew open the door. Poraz and his team rushed in, but one of the kidnappers opened fire, killing him and wounding six others. The other team had by now made it to the first floor. But despite firing at the metal lock, they had trouble getting the door to open. By the time they got in, Wachsman had been killed, shot in the neck and chest.

I was in the command post a few hundred yards away. I called Rabin and then went to see him in the kirya. The head of personnel for the army had gone to see the Wachsman family and break the news to them. Now, we had to tell the country. Rabin and I appeared on television together. Rabin insisted – wrongly – on saying he bore full responsibility. What had gone wrong, I had tried to impress on him, was not the decision to attempt the rescue. It was the rescue itself. That was not his responsibility. It was mine.

The next day, I visited Wachsman’s parents, and tried to convey how painful the failed rescue was to me, Rabin and every one else involved. I was inspired and humbled by their response. His father had told a reporter he wanted to convey his condolences to the parents of Nir Poraz. “This added loss has shaken me terribly,” he said. He told me he also believed that the Prime Minister had approved the rescue using his best judgement on the information that he had available. I spent time separately speaking to Mrs Wachsman. I tried to explain that in fighting an enemy like Hamas, people who not just threaten to kill but had proven they had no hesitation in doing so, I’d felt there was no choice but to attempt the rescue. I admitted we’d known the risks. But we’d tried to do the right thing, both for the country and her son. I think she understood, though I knew that nothing could alter the terrible sadness of her loss. The pain would take years to heal. Some part of it never would. Still, I felt it was important she and her husband know that we, too, felt their loss. For years afterwards, Nava and I continued to visit them.

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