Rise and Kill First/ Ronen Bergman
Thi is an account of the targeted assassinations conducted by the Caesarea unit of the Mossad.
The writer does not take a sympathetic stance and states their futility. Although the killings were sanctioned by the Prime Minister, the Mossad soon became a state within a state and though subject to the Prime Minister were for all intents and purposes autonomous.
By 2010 when the assassinations had topped 600, the decision to take out a senior Hamas man in Dubai, a country not hostile to Israel, by a dedicated team with forged foreign passports offended global opinion and prejudiced Israel’s status.
It started with the assassination of ex Nazis but “progressed” to Iraq’s nuclear scientists.
One of the victims was the peace process as Yasser Arafat was under pressure to do more to curb the attacks in Israel often with loss and injury of civilian life.
That and the corruption of the PLO capsized his leadership of the Palestinian state and twin state solution, although Israel’s repressive counter measures did not help. In a country where security is paramount the Mossad believed the end justified the means.
Of course Israel is a democracy and surrounded by country and forces who want to destroy it. However with the demise of the Soviet Bloc and the division in the Arab world this threat is far less potent than the Six Day War (1967).
After that was the conference at Khartoum when the Arab powers said no to the recognition of Israel, no to the cessation to the hostilities, a position in which they remained intransigent. So we have impasse. Israel became in the world ‘s eyes not David but Goliath and the twin states have been compared to apartheid South Africa.
The writer goes into some detail that is not always easy to absorb on the targets and manner of these killings. Some border on the absurd, like future Prime Minster Ehud Barak dressed as a woman with lipstick on a mission, or a marble plinth on a phone replaced which blew up once the target answered the phone.
Bergman’s conclusion was these assassinations were morally dubious and derailed the resolution but they are still continuing as recently as this month.
At 648 pages it’s a long and not always easy read but aside from the assassinations you have a historical account of Israel from independence in 1948 to the replacement of Hamas over the PLO as the most effective force to represent the Palestinians.
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