Saving Sergeant Netanyahu | The Times of Israel

Saving Sergeant Netanyahu | The Times of Israel: Netanyahu left 12th grade at Cheltenham High School in Pennsylvania several days before graduation and returned to Israel in June 1967. Ben, as he was known to his American friends, wanted to one-up his older brother, Yoni, and join not just the Paratroops but Sayeret Matkal (the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit), a commando unit whose name, like God’s, was not to be spoken. The Unit, then still making a name for itself as Israel’s top outfit and forever seared into the public consciousness for the daring raid on Entebbe that cost Yoni Netanyahu his life, was at the time a Skull and Bones-type society: you had to be tapped by someone else in the unit in order to be accepted.