General David Schechter had enthusiastically accepted his new assignment as the head of Yahalom Group. More importantly to Cohen and Avner, Schechter had reacted to Esther’s Sling the same way that every member of the Kitchen Cabinet had done. He was on board, but the wheels of IDF bureaucracy turned slowly – even when the grease was being applied by the prime minister himself. Schechter had only met with Amit Margolis twice and the agenda for each of those meetings had been to decide upon the new members of the planning team now charged with developing the concept of Esther’s Sling into a real battle plan. David Schechter had done something to endear himself to Amit Margolis. As his first official act as head of the Yahalom Group, he cancelled the pair of bodyguards that had been assigned to watch over Margolis. Both men agreed that the presence of two bodyguards simply turned Amit Margolis from an anonymous Israeli citizen into a target. When Margolis asked the general if countermanding the bodyguard orders, which had come from Zvi Avner, would create problems, the simple answer was “Let me worry about that.”
