Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/698448
metro » 12 June 30 • 2016 continued from page 10 "It was a meeting made in heaven. We were both Jewish and spoke Hebrew and English. I showed him around, and we socialized together, making every moment count. He told me that if I ever made it to Israel, to look him up." Months later Smargon was in Israel, and Netanyahu showed him around the coun- try, connected him with a kibbutz in the north and worked on getting him to move there and join the Israeli army. "He told me, 'You are in the wrong army. You should be doing what you are supposed to be doing: defending your people." Smargon remembers hearing this every time they got together. "Mickey Marcus was on my mind as I listened to Yoni trying to convince me to make aliyah," he says. "It was a combina- tion of Mickey, Yoni and their passion which helped me decide." When his contract with the U.S. Army was up, he moved to Kibbutz Shamir near the northern border with Lebanon. "I was welcomed with open arms," he recalls, and he went to work as a beekeeper. Adopting Israeli citizenship, he trained to serve under Netanyahu in the elite com- mando unit, Sayeret Matkal. After more training, he made the unit and went on many operations with Netanyahu. Neither Smargon, nor his kibbutz, were religious; they were having a barbecue on Yom Kippur in October 1973 when they saw Israeli Phantom jets in a dogfight overhead. While Netanyahu was sent to the north, Smargon served with the para- troopers in the south under the command of Gen. Ariel Sharon, who decades later would become prime minister. He crossed the Suez Canal in a dinghy as part of a bold move that allowed the Israelis to surround the Egyptian Third Army, which hastened its surrender. He was wounded by shrapnel, but returned to his unit within weeks. In June 1974, he and Netanyahu were returning from an anti-terrorist action when Yoni told him to return to his kib- butz, which was being attacked by terrorists. Three women were murdered, and Smargon recalls how he reacted. "I began throwing myself, more and more, into my work." ENTEBBE ACTION "I'll never forget that day," Smargon says about June 27, 1976, the day Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked the Air France plane and threatened to kill the 240 passengers and crew if dozens of ter- rorists weren't released by Israel, Germany and Kenya. Smargon says his unit was in the mid- dle of exercises, and Netanyahu was in his office when word of the hijacking came over the IDF radio. As the unit gathered to hear the reports, Netanyahu got a call directing him to develop a rescue plan. When they learned the plane had been flown to Entebbe, Uganda's main airport, they began rehearsing scenarios based on the intelligence they had. Ironically, Israel had helped train the Ugandan army, and one of the unit members had been a trainer and had much to share. Additionally, the terminal where the hos- tages were held had been built by an Israeli company and they soon had the blueprints. When the hijackers released the non-Jewish hostages, they learned more from them. They built models of the terminal and worked on perfecting the plan. "Yoni was a perfectionist," Smargon says. "He had us practice and practice and practice. We had to be correct to a fault. By July 1, we were almost ready, and I was sure I would be going." By this time, Israeli Gens. Mordechai Gur and Dan Shomron had given Netanyahu command of the assault team, and they held an all-nighter working on the most-minute details. The generals came to watch the preparations to be sure they could back the plan. Smargon was energized and ready, but Netanyahu had decided to tell his friend he couldn't go. "Yoni noticed that I was struggling and called me aside," he says. Smargon had suffered a severe ankle injury in an anti- terror operation and was not moving at full speed. "He said he was taking me off the assault because I presented a danger to successfully completing the mission. "I was devastated. 'This is what I had been born for,' I told him. But to no avail." Discouraged, but prepared, he was sent to Nairobi, Kenya, to help secure an air- strip so the Israeli planes could refuel to return to Israel. The Israeli planes had been painted over, a condition of the Kenyans who tried to hide their cooperation with Israel. When the planes arrived, he learned the mission had been carried out in just 58 minutes and had been a magnificent suc- cess, but also that Yoni, his commander and best friend, was killed in action — the only IDF fatality during the operation. "We were told that Yoni was gone, but we thought it was another person," Smargon says. "It couldn't be Yoni; we thought he was invincible, to be honest. I thought so, anyway. From that day, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of him. On his yahrtzeit, even though I don't have to, I say the Mourner's Kaddish. "I came back in a deep depression, though I was still happy and proud of what we did. No one in the world would have done such a thing," he says. Smargon stayed in the IDF, but after 20 years in Israel he returned to the States, ending up in Detroit. He met his second wife, Sylvia Leib, through a Jewish News classified ad. A blended family, he says "we are a true Brady Bunch with eight children." He teaches Hebrew to bar mitzvah students, especially the learning disabled, also using Hebrew Braille for the blind and Hebrew sign language for the hearing impaired. He also teaches naval personnel readying for deployment to the Middle East. He enjoys it and is always seeking new students. HONORING YONI "Yoni was brilliant to a fault. That's why he went to Harvard. He came from a brilliant family," Smargon said, mentioning Yoni's father, Benzion, a renowned scholar and author, and his brothers Benjamin ("Bibi"), prime minister of Israel, and Iddo, a doctor. All three brothers served in Sayeret Maktal. "Yoni was a selfless person. He would go out of his way to help you even if it was an inconvenience to him," Smargon says. "He loved life and knew what he wanted from life. He knew he belonged in Israel, and he knew he belonged in the army. His father didn't like it that he went back into the army after he was wounded in an operation, but he did. "I never met anyone like that," Smargon said. "If I ever said I loved another man, it would be him. I would have followed him anywhere." The rescue captured the imagination of the United States, and several films were made about it, but Smargon says the Israeli film, Operation Thunderbolt, is the best of the bunch. Each July 4, amid celebrating American independence, he sits down to watch to pay tribute to his friend with a familiar mixture of pride and sadness. Smargon lit a candle at the Detroit Jewish community's annual Yom HaZikaron service in May and had Yoni included in the list of soldiers remem- bered by name. He would have liked more to be said about Yoni. "It was the greatest military recue in the history of the world," Smargon maintains. "Yoni was a national hero and deserves the credit and the respect." * wikipedia.org Yoni Netanyahu led the IDF raid on Entebbe and was the only military fatality.