| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011480)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011480" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2328 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| *** |
| This book is only in part the story of my life - a life that, from my |
| beginnings as a kibbutz boy in pre-state Palestine, has been intimately entwined |
| with the infancy and adolescence and, now, the increasingly troubled middle |
| age of the State of Israel. |
| Still less is it only a record of its, or my, achievements, although they are |
| inevitably a part of the story. |
| In setting out to write it, I was also determined to document, from the inside, |
| the critical setbacks as well. Mistakes. Misjudgements. Missed opportunities. |
| And the lessons that we can, and must, be prepared to learn from them. |
| No less so than I when I was planning a hijack rescue or a cross-border |
| commando operation in Sayeret Matkal, I remain convinced that Israel's |
| security, Israel's very identity, can be safeguarded only by evaluating |
| dispassionately the situation in our country and the world. And by looking |
| ahead |
| Even when I was a soldier, I never stopped thinking this way, especially |
| when, first as military intelligence chief and especially as Chief of Staff, I knew, |
| in detail, every one of the security threats that faced Israel and was part of |
| discussions and decisions to try to confront them. I still vividly remember as |
| Chief of Staff, every Friday before the arrival of the Jewish Sabbath, sitting |
| with Rabin, who was then Israel's Defence Minister. Our offices were along the |
| same hallway of the kirya, the ministry's headquarters in the heart of Tel Aviv. |
| Rabin had a very low table in his office, with two chairs. We would sit across |
| from each other, each with a ready supply of coffee and Yitzhak smoking an |
| apparently endless supply of cigarettes, and we would just talk. Politics. |
| Strategy. Israel. The PLO. The surrounding Arab states. And the wider world |
| Many years before I became Prime Minister, I gave a lecture at a memorial |
| meeting for an Israeli academic. Not many people were there. I doubt even they |
| remember it. But I do, because what I said has, sadly, become more prophetic |
| than even I could have imagined. I talked about the imperative for peace as part |
| of Israel's security. There was a "window," I said. We were militarily strong. In |
| regional terms, we were a superpower. But politically, resolving the conflict |
| with our Arab enemies would almost certainly become more difficult with time. |
| 9 |
| HOUSE |
| _OVERSIGHT_011480 |
| |
