I am partial to the US Navy Seals because I spent 20 years in the Navy. About 16 or so years ago, I was on an Amphibious ship. We were doing operations around Malaysia I think. We took some foreign special forces onboard. They were called Gerkens (SP?). They were small guys, but they were very good. They did an OP with our forces and ended up capturing a whole crap load of our US Marines.

Do you mean the Gurkhas? The guys from Nepal who are trained by and fight for the British.

Yeah, they're pretty good, but I don't think they rank anywhere near the level of the SAS.

I feel a lot of pity for the Gurkhas - only recently (last three months or so) were former Gurkhas allowed British citizenship, and that was only for people who had retired after 1997. Complete sham.

__________________
"I see no reason why...there should not arise a United States of Europe" Winston Churchill, 1946

Ehud Barak - unit commander, later Chief of the General Staff and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu - unit team leader, later Israeli Prime Minister
Yonathan Netanyahu - unit commander, killed in Operation Entebbe. Benjamin Netanyahu's older brother.
Shaul Mofaz - unit deputy commander, later Chief of the General Staff and Defense Minister
Moshe Yaalon - unit commander, later Chief of the General Staff
Danny Yatom - unit commander, later Major General, head of Mossad and a Knesset member
Avi Dichter - unit fighter, later head of SHABAK (Shin Bet)
Several other unit veterans who later became army generals
There is a wideheld misconception that Prime Minister and former army general Ariel Sharon also served in Sayeret Matkal. This belief is unfounded.


Known operations
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.

1968 - Operation Shock - Sabotage of power plant and Nile bridges in Egypt (jointly with Israeli Air Force)
1968 - Operation Gift - Sabotage of 14 Arab airliners in Beirut International Airport, Lebanon
1969 - Operations Orchard 22, Orchard 37 - Assaults on high voltage wires and a control antenna in Egypt
1969 - Operation Butmus - Assault on fortified Green Island, Egypt (jointly with Shayetet 13)
1969 - Operation Rooster 53 - Kidnapping an entire Egyptian radar installation (jointly with Israeli Air Force)
1970 - Operation Rhodes - Assault on fortified Shaduan Island, Egypt (jointly with Shayetet 13)
1972 - Operation Isotope - Foiling a Sabena aircraft hijacking in Tel Aviv, Israel (hostages rescue)
1972 - Operation Crate 3 - Kidnapping 5 Syrian intelligence officers
1973 - Operation Spring of Youth - Killing Black September terrorist leaders in Beirut, Lebanon
1973 - Recapture of Mount Hermon from Syrian commandos in the Yom Kippur War (jointly with Golani Brigade)
1974 - Ma'alot massacre (school hostages rescue)
1975 - Savoy Operation (hotel hostages rescue)
1976 - Operation Entebbe - Foiling an Air France aircraft hijacking in Entebbe, Uganda (hostages rescue)
1977 - Reputed foiling of a Lufthansa aircraft hijacking in Mogadishu, Somalia (hostages rescue, jointly with German troops)
1978 - Dalal Mughrabi (bus hostages rescue)
1980 - Misgav Am (Kibbutz hostages rescue)
1984 - Kav 300 affair (bus hostages rescue, see Shin Bet)
1988 - Reputed Abu Jihad killing, in Tunis, Tunisia
1989 - Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid kidnapping, Lebanon (see Ron Arad)
1994 - Mustafa Dirani kidnapping, Lebanon (see Ron Arad)
1994 - Nachshon Waxman (attempted hostage rescue)


Our best Special Forces unit, constant action since they have come into existance, giving them an excellent amount of experiance, in fact in the Negev desert it is rumoured that they have run a training ground for covert ground operations for US Special Forces.

Jack Bauer tried to join Delta Force but he couldn't find them.

What a word "best" does mean here? Just a cool sounding name or, say, good list of special operations?