The Mirror · ilRoot Wikipedia's own words, with the distortions marked. This is not Wikipedia; the text below is theirs, unedited, reproduced under CC BY-SA. the drift report · case files · the full audit · the data

Sayeret Matkal

As it reads on Wikipedia · 1 finding marked in the text · see twenty years of this article's openings

The Sayeret Matkal (Hebrew: סיירת מטכ״ל) (formerly Unit 269 or Unit 262) (English: General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) is an elite special reconnaissance unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is subordinate to the General Staff of IDF. Though primarily a field intelligence-gathering unit, conducting deep reconnaissance behind enemy lines to obtain strategic intelligence, Sayeret Matkal is also tasked with a wide variety of special operations, including black operations, combat search and rescue, counterterrorism, hostage rescue, HUMINT, irregular warfare, long-range penetration, conducting manhunts, and reconnaissance beyond Israel's borders. While primarily subordinate to the General Staff, Sayeret Matkal is also the special operations component of the Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman). Its primary role is field intelligence-gathering and deep reconnaissance behind enemy lines, which aligns it closely with Aman's objectives. The unit is modeled after the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS), taking the unit's motto "Who Dares Wins". The unit is the Israeli equivalent of the SAS.

What the highlighted wording does
1
㉓ Reviewed in the sweep
Sayeret Matkal is Israel's elite special-forces reconnaissance unit, famous for the 1976 Operation Entebbe hostage rescue. Through 2005 the opening described the unit as having rescued "more than 100 Air France airline passengers hijacked to Uganda by PLO terrorists." Today's opening credits the unit generally with counterterrorism among its roles, but the description of the Entebbe hijackers as PLO terrorists is gone, though terror survives 12 times in the body. A reader today does not learn that the hijackers who forced the Entebbe rescue were identified as PLO terrorists.
The same lead, over time
The article text above is from "Sayeret Matkal" by Wikipedia contributors, reproduced unmodified under CC BY-SA 4.0. The highlights and numbered findings are ours: Shoresh, ilroot.com. Our copy of this lead was retrieved on 2026-06-01 and is held in our published data so the comparison survives any future edit.