• Ehud Barak – unit commander, later IDF Chief of Staff and Israeli Prime Minister

• Benjamin Netanyahu – unit team leader, later Israeli Prime Minister

• Jonathan Netanyahu – unit commander, killed in Operation Thunderbolt (Entebbe, Uganda). Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother.

• Shaul Mofaz – unit deputy commander, later IDF Chief of Staff and Israeli Defense Minister.

• Moshe Yaalon – unit commander, later IDF Chief of Staff

• Danny Yatom – unit deputy commander, later a General, head of Mossad and a Knesset member

• Avi Dichter – unit fighter, later head of Israel’s General Security Service (Shabak, aka Shin Bet), later the minister of internal security

• Daniel M. Lewin – MIT graduate student turned co-founder & CTO of Akamai Technologies, who was killed on American Airlines Flight 11 during the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

• Several other unit veterans who later became army generals and Knesset members

There is a widely held misconception that former Israeli Major General and former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also served in Sayeret Matkal. He did (while a Major) create and command the IDF’s first special-forces unit (Unit 101) in 1953, which many people feel was the organizational parent of Sayeret Matkal. However, when Unit 101 was merged into the Paratroopers Brigade in 1954, Sharon became brigade commander, and never served in Sayeret Matkal.

Note: Until recently the Israeli army had an official policy of denying existence of this unit. Operations were generally attributed to “elite paratroopers”. Sayeret Matkal operations are still kept secret to this day. However, due to the unit’s successes in daring operations, it soon became a very publicly-known secret in Israeli society.