Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations Paperback – July 9, 2019

“Rise and Kill First,” Ronen Bergman’s revelatory and astonishing history of Israel’s targeted assassinations, is a brilliant and prodigiously researched work. Readers will be riveted and amazed both by the scale of the killings carried out by the Israeli security services and by their tactical genius. They will likewise be appalled by the price in human lives, both innocent and not so innocent, at which Israel’s survival has been purchased. And they will be profoundly saddened as they comprehend how that survival has required the best and bravest of Israel’s young men and women to steel themselves against the fundamental moral precepts that govern ordinary life.Bergman bluntly tells us – and most readers will agree – that the targets of Israel’s assassinations deserve to die. They have planned andexecuted the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of Israeli civilians – men, women, children and infants – as they go about the activities of their daily lives. No cause, no grievance, can ever mitigate such atrocities. And in war, where there is no realistic possibility of arresting and trying the perpetrators, the justice of striking them down is, at least to this reader, not open to serious moral question.But things are not always so simple, even when the target of an assassination is a terrorist murderer. As in one instance recounted by Bergman, it may happen that, despite the best efforts of counter-terror forces to ensure that the target will be at home alone when the hit occurs, he must be shot in front of his wife and teenage daughter. Unpleasant, says the operative in relating the story to Bergman, but the job must be done. And he does not hesitate to do it.Infinitely worse, of course, is the loss of totally innocent life that is the virtually inevitable by-product of assassinations carried out from the air or by explosive. As detailed by Bergman, Israel does try to prevent this, and countless operations have been aborted because of the likelihood that unacceptable “collateral damage” will occur. But if no harm to innocents were deemed tolerable, many operations could simply not be carried out.And that would not be without consequence to innocent Israelis. As Bergman shows, in some cases where operations were called off because of the likelihood of harm to innocent bystanders, the terrorists thus spared have gone on to commit attacks in which dozens of Israeli civilians were killed. That causes one security officer to tell Bergman that although it causes him genuine pain when an Arab child is killed in an Israeli operation, if a child is going to be harmed, he would prefer that the child not be Israeli. Is it wrong, or natural, to care for one’s own people first?The Israeli government has no doubt about the answer. And although many innocent Arab lives were lost in the unprecedented number of Israeli assassinations that took place in response to the horrific wave of terrorism that struck Israel during the Second Intifada, those operations, together with the IDF’s Defensive Shield offensive in the West Bank, gave the lie to the familiar bromide that there is no military solution to terrorism. The Israelis found one, putting down the Second Intifada by force of arms. In winning that victory, Israel’s program of targeted assassinations played an important part.More recently, Israel has targeted Iranian scientists working on the country’s nuclear program for elimination. That caused a female Mossad agent to stand up at one meeting and declare that her father was a scientist who had helped develop Israel’s nuclear capacity and ask her colleagues whether they would consider him a legitimate target for assassination by the enemy. Her question did not receive much by way of an answer, but the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists continued.Unfortunately, the dazzling feat of groundbreaking reportage and riveting narrative achieved by Bergman in “Rise and Kill First” is marred in the book’s final pages by some unaccountable and highly misleading statements about the agreement concerning Iran’s nuclear program (formally known as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”(“JCPOA”))reached between Iran and six world powers in July 2015. Relating the prior clash between former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the feasibility and wisdom of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Bergman writes that the JCPOA , which mooted their debate, was"an Iranian capitulation to a number of demands that the ayatollahs had been rejecting for years. Iran agreed to dismantle the nuclear project almost entirely and to be subject to strict limits and supervision for many years into the future"In view of the heated controversy then raging in the United States over whether the JCPOA would effectively restrain Iran’s nuclear program, or put it on a glide path to becoming a nuclear-armed power, Bergman’s characterization of the agreement as an “Iranian capitulation” is nothing less than startling. And while one might argue that whether the deal was a good one or a bad one is a matter of opinion, Bergman misstates the underlying facts on which his opinion is based.Thus, contrary to his assertion, the deal did not require Iran to “dismantle” anything, let alone its “entire[ ]” nuclear project; it only required that Iran mothball centrifuges that exceeded the agreement’s limits during its term. And the agreement provided that its restrictions on Iran’s enrichment of uranium to near-fissile purity would sunset after 15 years, hardly a prohibitive period to religious fanatics playing a long game.Further, the agreement placed no restrictions on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, and its research on high speed centrifuges was allowed to continue. As to the latter, even Barack Obama acknowledged that, after the agreement’s sunset, high-speed centrifuges could “[shrink] breakout times [for Iran to construct a nuclear bomb] . . . almost down to zero.”Bergman refers to none of this in characterizing the JCOPA as an “Iranian capitulation.” Similarly, while asserting (without much explication) that the agreement represented “a double triumph” for Meir Dagan, he fails to mention that the JCPOA was opposed not only by Benjamin Netanyahu, but also by opposition leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, in very strong terms.The result is that a not otherwise-informed reader could well come away with a false, or at best incomplete, picture of the issues surrounding the Iran nuclear agreement. To me that is a grievous fault, but one paragraph in a book of more than 600 pages cannot affect its overall quality.Bergman ends his book with a lament that Israel’s intelligence and security agencies have been so successful as to foster “the illusion among most of the nation’s leaders that covert operations . . . could be used in place of real diplomacy.” Toward the end of his life, Bergman writes, Meir Dagan (who is the deserved hero of this book) realized “that only a political solution with the Palestinians – the two-state solution – could end the 150-year conflict.” Ill with cancer, Dagan tried with his last energy to persuade the Israeli public to elect a leadership that would vigorously pursue that aim. But, Bergman writes, his efforts were to no avail:"Despite the enormous adulation he enjoyed as the ultimate Israeli master spy, Dagan’s speech, as well as the calls of many other former heads of the intelligence and military establishments for a compromise agreement with the Palestinians. . . have all fallen on deaf ears."One can easily imagine what may animate the longing for peace of retired heroes like Meir Dagan. They have dedicated their lives to protecting Israeli civilians from the remorseless terrorists who would murder them, and that has required them to do terrible things. Reflecting on what they have seen and done, it would not be surprising for them to feel moral qualms and wish there was another way. As one former head of the security service observed in the film The Gatekeepers, “[w]hen you leave Shin Bet, you become a bit of a leftist.”Being removed from the dirty business of targeted assassinations, the average Israeli voter may see things more dispassionately. What he sees is the Palestinians’ unremitting intransigence, their rejection without counteroffer of generous Israeli proposals for a two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority’s pension payments for the murder of Israeli men, women and children, and the Holocaust denial and gross anti-Semitism of Mahmoud Abbas, the supposedly moderate president of the PA.What exactly can be done to persuade such people to negotiate in good faith about peace? Ronen Bergman doesn’t say.

Book arrived on time and as described.

This book was one of the finest accounts of a dark history that I have ever read. The author does explain why the Israelis found it necessary to use targeted assassinations for the safety of their people. The emotions that one experiences while reading this book are at times extreme and there are times that you are very proud of what the Isrseli’s were able to accomplish and there were times that you were disappointed in what Israeli’s actually did to defend themselves.I have read many of the other reviews of the book and found statements which I was in total agreement. As I read the book, I feared that this book would become a reference to be used by Israeli’s enemies for decades to come. Only time will tell if my fears are correct.The book is over 700 pages long. I had trouble putting it down because of the quality of the writing and the stories that I was reading. He ends the book chastising the policies and leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, and I do not disagree with his opinions. However, at no time does he ever opine what he would have done differently to make the situation better than it is. The leadership of Israel siged peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan in exchange for land. To this day, Israel has “peaceful” relations with both Egypt and Jordan. Israel unilaterally decided to withdraw it settlements from Gaza. In exchange for this conciliatory action, Israel gets rockets and terror tunnels from Gaza. According to some people, the settlements are an obstacle to the peace process in the area. The actions of Hamas in Gaza prove that the settlements had nothing to do with the peace effort. After 638 pages of riveting stories, the author thanks all of those who helped him with this seven-year project. At no time does the author ever acknowledge that life for him and his family has been made safer by the efforts that he so explicitly described in the book. The people he wrote about were left thankless for risking their lives and the personal sacrifices they have made attempting to improve the safety and quality of life for Israeli’s in particular and all Jews around the world. I respect the authors skill and effort, and right to publish this exhausting work. I disrespect the author personally for the potential harm that this book will do to Israel and Jews in the world. I feel the author owes the intelligence forces who he has written about, a sincere apology for not making any mention of the sacrifice and good intentions that these people have made to attempt to protect their country and their people in the acknowledgment section at the end of the book.ARW

after meeting the author i wanted to read the book and was not dissapointed

The sheer difficulty of the sources is a testament to his skill as a journalist. The sheer difficulty of this Gordian Knot problem is a testament to his skill as a formally trained historian. The edge-of-your-seat prose would probably be poo-poo'd by a few academic historians, but mostly out of jealousy.What I'm learning: History is a brutal place where no one's hands are clean. If you, like me, aren't invested in any of the sides in the Middle East, this book won't help you choose. Rather, it will teach you that nuances and contradictions are a standard part of history (that is, history wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, not the history of social media and gossip), and that history isn't tied up in a bow.So much for a historian's comment. For general readers, you'll have a hard time putting it down at bedtime. Your understanding of today's wars in the Middle East will grow exponentially.Last observation: look at this comments from the readers who hated it: they sound like something from the Simpsons, old man shaking his cane at the clouds and yelling, "Get off my lawn!"