Rise And Kill First: The Secret History Of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, Bergman - B-

                                               If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.
                                                    The Babylonian Talmud

                                               "Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the western world." Stemming from the revolutionary roots of the Zionist movement, the horror of the Holocaust, and Arab animosity, Israel has felt alone in a dangerous world and comfortably reliant on targeted assassinations. The early Zionists were not reluctant to defend the pioneer settlers and they established a defense force known as the Haganah in the early 20's. They took on an aggressive posture, assassinating British officers during WWII. The Jews knew that they could rely on only themselves. In Palestine, they adopted assassination, guerilla warfare, and terrorism as tools to establish and defend the state.
                                               When Israel was established, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion set up the security forces - the Shin Bet for internal matters and the Mossad for foreign - as off the books, and beyond the reach of Parliament. They reported to him alone. Taking clandestine operations against any opponent at any level became part of the strategy of the state. In the 1950's, fedayeen sponsored by Egypt and Jordan wreaked havoc in Israel. The response was the establishment of a highly trained group under Ariel Sharon that responded and did so effectively and violently. As the intrusions continued, two high up Egyptian officers were targeted and killed in 1956. A few years later, The Mossad earned international admiration for finding and kidnapping Eichmann in Argentina. When Egypt's 'Germans' built a missile system, Mossad kidnapped and killed the lead scientist. They then proceeded to totally undermine the missile effort by subterfuge. Mossad continued to build and strengthen.
                                               In the late 1950's, two Palestinians, Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, formed an organization they called Fatah (later commonly referred to as the PLO) with the purpose of waging terror against the Israeli state. By the mid-60's, they were behind dozens, sometimes  hundreds, acts of violence against Israel and its citizens every year. The Israeli victory in the Six Day War did not change the dynamic of Fatah's mission or methods. They now operated in the expanded Israel behind the lines and continued to wage aggressive guerrilla war. Palestine now had a leader, and one increasingly recognized around the world. Gaza was a source of consistent PLO violence. Shin Bet teamed with the IDF and between 1968 and 1972 neutralized the PLO. Israel was now utilizing extra-judicial assassination on its own soil.  In 1968, the PLO hijacked its first plane and created a new, effective method of terrorism. Four years later, they killed  Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The response from Mossad was immediate. They killed the PLO leader in Rome a month later. Within a year, they had killed 14 people they believed were part of the Olympic slaughter. Mossad teamed with the IDF for the first time in 1973 when they took out three of the top five leaders of the PLO in a coordinated action in Beirut. The war between Israel and the PLO continued to escalate year in and year out. The Israelis successfully stopped the PLO hijacking of a plane in Uganda with the famous Entebbe Raid. Throughout the late 70's and into the 80's the war escalated in southern Lebanon until the IDF invaded the country in 1982 and surrounded Beirut. Under pressure from the US, Israel allowed Arafat to leave Beirut and go to Tunis.  The invasion and occupation of Lebanon was a strain for the Israeli security services to such a degree that Shin Bet leadership broke every conceivable law in a cover-up of murders,  the senior leadership was removed.
                                            In 1987, the spontaneous eruption against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that became known as the Intifada forever changed the dynamics of the Israeli - Arab struggle. Israel was no longer the David to the Arab's Goliath. The Israeli's were now the Goliath crushing the peoples of the occupied territories. Long years of arbitrary military rule and encroachment on Arab land sparked the revolt. The Israelis did not view it as an organic revolt, but as another PLO operation, particularly after Arafat claimed to have given the order for it. The Mossad and IDF were able to assassinate Abu Jihad, the PLO's number two, in Tunis, over twenty years after his assassination had been approved by Golda Meir. Soon thereafter and although both sides kept up their attempts to kill each other and the Intifada raged on, diplomatic discussions opened up in Oslo. The Oslo Accords saw the PLO and Israel recognize each other and turn the management of the occupied territories over to the Palestinian Authority.
                                             Iraq joined the list of nations that swore to destroy Israel when Saddam Hussein gained control in the 1970's. With French assistance, he began a nuclear power development program and almost immediately, his scientists began getting killed when they traveled to Europe or Egypt. Nonetheless, the Iraqis made progress and Israel began to consider bombing the Osirak reactor. In June of 1975, Israeli planes flew 600 miles to Osirak and obliterated Hussein's ambitions. He redoubled his efforts. Another nation committed to Israel's destruction rose out of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Iran sponsored Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, and Hezbollah introduced the technique of the suicide bomb. The Israeli's invented and put to work the first drones to observe and, eventually, kill with. The endless circle of violence and retaliation continued.
                                            A second Intifada began around the turn of the century when the Arabs relentlessly tore Israel apart with suicide bombings. On and on the war of attrition, the murderous merry-go-round continued. In 2002, Israel decided to wipe out every leader of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Israelis successfully dismantled the leadership and soon thereafter, Arafat died of natural causes.  To the north, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran created what the Israeli intelligence community called the Radical Alliance.  The IDF invaded southern Lebanon but once again, failed. Hamas turned on Fatah and completely controlled Gaza. Iran was pouring money into Gaza, Hezbollah and Syria. Strategically, Israel was as threatened as it ever had been. In 2007, Mossad learned that Syria had been working on a nuclear reactor they had purchased from N. Korea six years earlier with Iranian money. Israel destroyed the facility a few months later, but did not publicize it. A joint US/Israeli action killed the number two man at Hezbollah and an IDF sniper team killed the number one general in Syria. The allies worked on stuxnet, the computer virus that destabilized Iranian centrifuges and Israel began killing Iranian scientists.
                                           The book closes with the details of a battle between the head of the Mossad and the PM. Meir Dugan quit his job because he believed Bibi Netanyahu has forsaken the Zionist dream of a Jewish democracy in the desert and replaced it with a right wing suppression of millions of Arabs in a country in which Jews would be a minority.
                                          The ending of this ridiculously long book is quite inadequate because it brings  this philosophical divide to the table in the last two pages without any preliminaries and leaves the reader hanging about the status of strategic affairs in general.  The one conclusion you come to is that the last seven decades of endless fighting is pointless.  But, the problems are  apparently incapable of resolution. Each side seems as intractable as they did in 1947.