My Amazon Review of Ronen Bergman's "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations"

Clausewitzian Realism in Service of the State

Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman has written a well-researched and readable book on Israel’s secret war of targeted assassinations against its most feared enemies ranging from Iran to Hamas to Hezbollah. In fact as I write this review there is a front page New York Times story (8/7/18) on the assassination of a Syrian rocket scientist on the streets of Damascus that was attributed to the Mossad which remains pound for pound the best foreign security agency in the world. He starts in the pre-state era and goes through 2015 and covers the three main organs of state security: Mossad (external), Shin Bet (internal) and AMAN (military). He covers their great successes and their failures. Unfortunately he is way too much of a critic for my taste.

Bergman begins his book by quoting from Talmud: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” That in a nutshell is the major lesson of his book because a small state surrounded by enemies has to act preemptively if it is to survive. The state has to be a Clausewitzian realist who understands to paraphrase Clausewitz “assassination is the continuation of politics by other means.”

Perhaps the clearest example of realism is when the Mossad hires former Waffen-SS Lieutenant Colonel and Hitler favorite Otto Skorzeny to disrupt an Egyptian missile program in the early 1960s. At that time Nasser recruited World War II German rocket scientists to develop missiles to attack Israel. The operation was a success. Just think about this, Israel hiring a Nazi leader to defeat its current Egyptian enemy.

There are many stories like this with hits taking place in Europe, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Each and every one had to be personally approved by the prime minister. Of course thing often went awry, most notably during the 1982 Lebanon War. It is a high risk business where the lives of the agents are at great risk and the mission can fail if civilians are killed. However, unlike their opponents, the Israeli’s agonized over the potential for collateral damage and actually called off operations because of undue risk to non-targets.

Bergman’s main source for more recent events appears to be former Mossad head Meir Dagan who ran the operation from 2003-2012. Dagan died in 2015 and was a harsh critic of Netanyahu, especially with respect to his Iran policy. Bergman too dislikes Netanyahu but he more kind to Sharon and Begin. I did not like Bergman using his pejorative term “right wing” to describe the Likud faction. I would have used center-right. After all he never called the Labor Party “left wing.”

Despite my criticisms Bergman has written a terrific book. There is much to learn about Israeli tradecraft and how their decision making process worked. And when one reads about operational failures, the critic has to sit in the shoes of the decision makers at the time the decision was made. In the spy business it is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. Bergman ends his book by noting that we can’t confuse tactical success with strategic success. Israel’s strategic dilemma hasn’t much changed since the aftermath of the 1967 war. It has yet to reach a long term settlement with the Palestinians and still faces a very hostile Iran.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1PFY89UKBK8SG/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv