Free No Mission Is Impossible by Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal Page B

strip, and Chatto touched down.
    As the plane barreled down the runway, the engines shut off, one after the other. The final drops of fuel had run out, but the Meteor was on the ground.
    The base’s whiz technician reached the plane first. “You did it?” he asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo the war has started.”
    Ezer Weizman, the base commander and a nephew of Israel’s first president, arrived immediately.
    â€œCongrats!” Never one to miss a chance to show off, he went on, “Notice, it was only Hatzor that could bring you in.” He added, “They’re waiting for you at headquarters. There’s a problem.”
    At headquarters, Lahat, Tolkovsky, and Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan were waiting for Chatto and Shibi. They shook hands.
    â€œWhat’s the problem?” Chatto inquired.
    â€œAt the last minute, Amer decided not to fly on the Ilyushin. He’s going to take off later, on a Dakota.”
    The spirit of battle overcame Chatto. “If there’s time, we’ll refuel and go out on a second run,” he offered, and Shibi nodded in agreement.
    â€œIt would be too obvious and would expose intelligence sources,” Dayan said. “Let’s leave him be. The moment you wiped out the general staff, you won half the war. Let’s drink to the other half.”
    Dayan pulled out a bottle of wine, and everyone toasted.
    The 1956 War had thus begun, yet only a handful Israelis knew.
    Operation Rooster would remain top-secret for thirty-three years, with details reaching the public only in 1989. The Egyptians never reported the downing of the aircraft, probably because they weren’t aware that it had been targeted; in Cairo, rumors spread that the plane had crashed close to a desert island, and that the army senior staff was still there, awaiting rescue.
    Marshal Amer, the Egyptian chief of staff at the time, would commit suicide after the Six Day War.
    Â Â Â  YOASH (“CHATTO”) TZIDON, COMBAT PILOT
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  In March 1993, four years after details of Operation Rooster were released, a young Egyptian unexpectedly reached out to Chatto Tzidon. He was Ahmed Jaffar Nassim, the son of an adviser to President Nasser, who had died during Chatto’s operation. The dramatic meeting between the son and the man who had killed his father took place at the Tel Aviv Hilton.The meeting, Chatto later said, was “emotional but without bitterness.” Jaffar, a disabled man in a wheelchair, wanted to know if it was true that his father had fallen into Israeli captivity and been tortured to death after his plane made a forced landing. Chatto clarified that there had been no forced landing, that the operation had been one of “door-to-door service.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Two years later, Chatto helped Jaffar Nassim gain admission for surgery at Rambam Hospital, in Haifa. “The desire to aid him came out of a feeling of sharing in his sorrow over his father’s death . . . as well as the thought that my own son could have found himself in a similar situation.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  This was just one way in which Chatto showed an unusual streak of sensitivity toward others. His spouse, Raisa, recalls how on the eve of the 1956 War, at a dinner at the home of friends in London, Chatto met the sister of the hostess, an Auschwitz survivor. She was on her way to Israel and remarked “how much she would have liked to see Paris.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Why don’t you stop on your way?” Chatto asked. The woman replied, “I have a one-year-old baby. I can’t.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Chatto had a solution: “I’ll take the baby to Israel.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  And, just like that,