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Reviews
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman
yossikhe's review against another edition
5.0
Pretty great. Even though it is long, this history is impressively easy to read and contains the exact information needed. As a great journalistic and historiographic work, it tells an objective story of one of the world’s most mysterious organizations and brings up a space for reflecting upon subjects such as the limits of power, of targeted killings, and how can it affect/benefit a country.
netsfrompdx's review against another edition
4.0
Rise and Kill First is an interesting read. It spans the length of Israel's 70+ years of existence, giving a detailed historical account on regional politics, war and terrorist groups/tactics. For the most part, it doesn't put Israel in the best light and feels like the author has an agenda/ax to grind from his days as a reporter. Or put another way, it's the other side of the story versus what you see in the media when it comes to Mossad and Israel's mission to protect itself from all enemies. In any case, the author got amazing access to files, data and the leaders who lived it, allowing him to share a ton of info that I found fascinating. The book is really long and felt like a grind to get through at times, but it was a great historical lesson so was worth the time investment to read it.
richardwells's review against another edition
4.0
Four stars for a general reader, five for those of us really interested in Israel.
The title is taken from a line in the Talmud, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first,” and is used as justification for everything from retribution/revenge murders (assassinations,) to preemptive kills, to blowing up Iran’s nuclear reactor. It is, I suppose, good advice, especially if you’re surrounded by enemies, and facing an existential crisis every day. It has, however, proven to be very difficult to pull off, strategically problematic, and, on a human level, morally numbing.
Israel is a very small country. In a map comparison - from the US east to west -it’s smaller than New Jersey, would sink in Lake Michigan, and is about the same size as Vancouver Island. It was founded by survivors of the Holocaust that effectively killed all the Jews in Europe, and has been surrounded by enemies since its founding. Its enemies believe it should be wiped off the face of the earth, and have been actively working toward that goal since day one, and Israel has used politics and terror to come to life, and survive since before day one.
The subject of this book is targeted assassinations – assassination as policy. Based on over a thousand interviews with policy makers, and assassins, it’s a quick (considering its size of 700 pages) and troubling read. The lethal skullduggery that keeps the middle east percolating in stress and blood has not been captured in any fictional account I’ve seen. The Mossad of Daniel Silva’s books is a well oiled machine, in real life it’s a (no pun intended) hit or miss operation – sometimes at the top of its game, sometimes mired in interagency politics (the Shin Bet and Israeli Defense Forces figure in.) Assassinations don’t often come off as planned, everybody seems to be trying to kill somebody, innocents are targeted by Arabs through the sickening use of suicide bombers, and are “unfortunate” victims of plans gone awry, or bombs built too large on the Jewish side. None of the players are pure, all are self-justified, assassinations tend to cause as many problems as they might solve, and there is no trust – at any level. I was left pondering the popular definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Peace in the middle-east? Good luck.
Rise Up and Kill is a terrific history lesson, albeit through one blood smeared lens, and is going to be mandatory reading for thriller writers, students of the middle-east, diplomats, and politicians. It’s also an important read for anyone interested in Israel’s survival.
The title is taken from a line in the Talmud, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first,” and is used as justification for everything from retribution/revenge murders (assassinations,) to preemptive kills, to blowing up Iran’s nuclear reactor. It is, I suppose, good advice, especially if you’re surrounded by enemies, and facing an existential crisis every day. It has, however, proven to be very difficult to pull off, strategically problematic, and, on a human level, morally numbing.
Israel is a very small country. In a map comparison - from the US east to west -it’s smaller than New Jersey, would sink in Lake Michigan, and is about the same size as Vancouver Island. It was founded by survivors of the Holocaust that effectively killed all the Jews in Europe, and has been surrounded by enemies since its founding. Its enemies believe it should be wiped off the face of the earth, and have been actively working toward that goal since day one, and Israel has used politics and terror to come to life, and survive since before day one.
The subject of this book is targeted assassinations – assassination as policy. Based on over a thousand interviews with policy makers, and assassins, it’s a quick (considering its size of 700 pages) and troubling read. The lethal skullduggery that keeps the middle east percolating in stress and blood has not been captured in any fictional account I’ve seen. The Mossad of Daniel Silva’s books is a well oiled machine, in real life it’s a (no pun intended) hit or miss operation – sometimes at the top of its game, sometimes mired in interagency politics (the Shin Bet and Israeli Defense Forces figure in.) Assassinations don’t often come off as planned, everybody seems to be trying to kill somebody, innocents are targeted by Arabs through the sickening use of suicide bombers, and are “unfortunate” victims of plans gone awry, or bombs built too large on the Jewish side. None of the players are pure, all are self-justified, assassinations tend to cause as many problems as they might solve, and there is no trust – at any level. I was left pondering the popular definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Peace in the middle-east? Good luck.
Rise Up and Kill is a terrific history lesson, albeit through one blood smeared lens, and is going to be mandatory reading for thriller writers, students of the middle-east, diplomats, and politicians. It’s also an important read for anyone interested in Israel’s survival.
epictetsocrate's review against another edition
4.0
„Asasinatele, a spus el, au efect asupra moralului, dar și un efect practic. Nu cred că erau mulți care ar fi putut să-l înlocuiască pe Napoleon sau pe un președinte ca Roosevelt sau pe un prim-ministru ca Churchill. Aspectul personal cu siguranță că joacă un rol. Este adevărat că oricine poate fi înlocuit, dar este o diferență între un înlocuitor plin de curaj și un personaj fără viață.”
Mai mult de-atât, folosirea asasinatelor, în viziunea lui Dagan, „este cu mult mai morală” decât un război la scară mare. Neutralizarea câtorva personaje importante este de ajuns ca să facă inutilă cea de-a doua variantă și să salveze vieți a numeroși soldați și civili de ambele părți. Un atac de mare amploare asupra Iranului ar duce la un conflict pe scară largă în Orientul Mijlociu și, chiar și atunci, este posibil să nu creeze suficiente daune instalațiilor iraniene.
În sfârșit, din punctul de vedere al lui Dagan, dacă Israelul ar începe un război cu Iranul, ar însemna o incriminare a întregii sale cariere. Cărțile de istorie ar arăta că nu și-a îndeplinit sarcina pe care i-a dat-o Sharon: să pună capăt evoluției nucleare iranieni folosind metode sub acoperire, fără a recurge la un atac pe față.
Opoziția lui Dagan și marea presiune similară din partea conducătorilor armatei și serviciilor de informații au forțat amânarea repetată a atacului asupra Iranului. Dagan chiar l-a informat pe directorul CIA, Leon Panetta, despre planul israelian (prim-ministrul spunea că a făcut acest lucru fără permisiune) și, peste puțină vreme, președintele Obama îl avertiza, la rândul său, pe Netanyahu să nu atace.
Mai mult de-atât, folosirea asasinatelor, în viziunea lui Dagan, „este cu mult mai morală” decât un război la scară mare. Neutralizarea câtorva personaje importante este de ajuns ca să facă inutilă cea de-a doua variantă și să salveze vieți a numeroși soldați și civili de ambele părți. Un atac de mare amploare asupra Iranului ar duce la un conflict pe scară largă în Orientul Mijlociu și, chiar și atunci, este posibil să nu creeze suficiente daune instalațiilor iraniene.
În sfârșit, din punctul de vedere al lui Dagan, dacă Israelul ar începe un război cu Iranul, ar însemna o incriminare a întregii sale cariere. Cărțile de istorie ar arăta că nu și-a îndeplinit sarcina pe care i-a dat-o Sharon: să pună capăt evoluției nucleare iranieni folosind metode sub acoperire, fără a recurge la un atac pe față.
Opoziția lui Dagan și marea presiune similară din partea conducătorilor armatei și serviciilor de informații au forțat amânarea repetată a atacului asupra Iranului. Dagan chiar l-a informat pe directorul CIA, Leon Panetta, despre planul israelian (prim-ministrul spunea că a făcut acest lucru fără permisiune) și, peste puțină vreme, președintele Obama îl avertiza, la rândul său, pe Netanyahu să nu atace.
kattbiff's review against another edition
4.0
As a historical overview of the of Mossad and Shin Bet this book succeeds magnificently. No stones are left unturned when Bergman investigates the sensitive and complex topic of the book. Some sections come of as a bit dry but by organising chapters according to major events rather than keeping to a strict chronological expose it becomes more digestible. I learned a lot by reading this book, not only regarding the focus topic, but also middle eastern history and politics which is a bit of a blank spot for me personally. Would recommend to anyone interested in history and current events.
jlmb's review against another edition
3.0
My first emotion when finally finishing this book was one of relief. Relief that I can stop thinking about this soul-crushing subject. I am fully aware of how lucky I am that I have the choice to ignore what is going on in the Middle East, unlike all the unfortunate people who live there. It's embarrassing to admit that I want to stick my fingers in my ears and say la-la-la instead of helping to work on a possible solution. However, after reading this book I honestly feel like there IS no solution.
Going into this, I knew very little about the history of Israel and Palestine -only what I have gleaned from the news over the years. I'm certainly no expert now, after reading one book, but I do have a much better grasp of what is happening. I recognize names of major players, past & present, and have a rudimentary understanding of how those people interact with each other. I now see how events built upon one another, leading to the huge mess currently happening.
There are a lot of "if-onlys & what-ifs" in this book. The biggest one by far is the issue that arose in the late 1940's when Israel began. The hawks and the doves argued about how to treat the Palestinians who were living there. The doves pushed for something like what the USA was doing for post war Japan- to rebuild and restructure in order to create a healthy, educated populace that would benefit everyone. The hawks were more along the lines of "Screw 'em. They are weak, we don't have to deal with them. Let's go hunt Nazis!" The hawks won. Imagine if, instead of pushing the Palestinians into crowded ghettos with poor infrastructure, few jobs & little healthcare or education, Israel had chosen to work with them. The world would not currently be dealing with all this violence. It was a devastating choice.
Israel has been putting out fires since day one. First they were all about hunting down the Nazis. I am all for that! It was satisfying to read about how Mossad, Shin Bet & AMAN tracked them down. I had to laugh, a bit of black humor, when it was mentioned how once the Israelis tracked down a nazi, they would promise the Nazi to leave them alone & grant a sort of immunity if they would name names and turn on their collaborators. Once the Nazi named names, the Israelis shot him in the head. Psych!
All this Nazi hunting blinded them to the rise of the PLO. I felt bad for the agent who recognized the growing issue and begged his superiors to let him kill all the founding PLO members in one fell swoop. Turns out Israel was secretly paying for the PLO apartment safe house in Berlin so they could bug it & keep track of what was going on. A meeting of all the top officials was happening there. It would have been - ok, not easy, but feasible to kill them all. Israel said no, they didn't want to get Europe mad at them for killing people in a Western country. A big "what-if". What if Arafat, Abu Jihab, etc had been killed. How would things have developed differently.
By the time Israel figured out the PLO was a big problem, the PLO wasn't really the problem anymore. Hezbollah was. However, it was...easier?....to keep the focus on attacking the PLO members rather than the new threat. The story about the murder of PLO leader Abu Jihad was so upsetting to read. Even the agents in charge of tracking him admitted that he was a good man with strong morals who loved his family . But he was on the wrong "team" so he was murdered in front of his wife in their bedroom while his children cried in terror. Wow, I can't even imagine. How terrifying for his family.
A big "if-only" turns out to be that Israel sort of helped/supported the rise of Islamic fundamentalist groups, thinking since Islam is a religion of peace then they wouldn't be a big problem like the PLO, which was a nationalist group wanting it's own separate country from Israel. Wrong!!! Huge mistake. Bigly mistake. It turned out that they weren't really religious but instead were creepy fundamentalists who twisted their religion in order to gain power and control. Just like creepy fundamentalists in all the religions! There is nothing like modifying your religion to support your own desires (see all those Christian "prosperity preachers" for a good American example of that). The imans followed the lead of Iran's Khomeini, who showed them a new path to power. Preaching their way to power. Wow, how convenient of Hezbollah's Fadlallah to tweak the meaning of the commandment to not commit suicide by issuing a fatwa that explained, well, if you commit suicide for us then it's not really suicide and thus okey dokey. Once they started running out of hopeless men willing to kill themselves, Yassin released a new fatwa allowing women and children to be suicide bombers. That is a big take-backsey from a previous edict, stating God didn't allow women & children to be suicide bombers. Wow, that is so convenient how God changed his mind like that!
It was hard to keep track of all the Hebzollah and Hamas members since so many of them were being murdered by Mossad. I found the semantics surrounding the murders fascinating. First they were called assassinations. Then they were called targeted killings. Then they were called interceptions. Then it became targeted preventative acts. It started off being a big deal, Israel choosing to kill someone. The prime minister would meet with the cabinet & discuss it and then sign a "red page". There was a lot of discussion about it and fairly frequently it was decided not to murder someone. However, as the years passed, there was less and less oversight. Once drones came into play, people were getting murdered all the time. There was no time for discussing the legal, moral & ethical issues surrounding the murders. They were used for revenge and punishment, after gruesome suicide bomber incidents, not for any sort of tactical reason. The story of the NIO(intelligence agent) who recoiled at this was insightful. He refused to transmit information to an operations team once he realized they were going to purposefully bomb a building in the middle of the day that had no terrorists or anyone related to terrorists in the building. It was to be a purely revenge attack for a suicide bomber attack in Israel. A tit for tat revenge killing. It was wrong on so many levels and I am impressed that guy stood up for his morals and basically his soul. Of course there was a complete freak out by those in charge and the guy was silently fired.
The biggest weakness of this book was how Bergman spent so much time detailing the atrocities caused by the terrorist groups but very rarely went into detail about the murders of innocent people by the Israelis. It was non stop on both sides. A constant bombardment of murdering civilians. Burning children alive, slamming the heads of toddlers onto rocks, people blown into pieces etc. This was done by both sides. repeatedly. Over and over and over with no end in sight. That was the hardest part of the book, the ceaseless violence for the sake of revenge. I was surprised that the Israelis couldn't figure out why there were so many suicide bombers. Hello! You created them! If you put a man in a totally hopeless situation where his friends and family have been killed, maimed, mentally scarred etc. then yeah, he will be consumed with revenge and want to hurt the people he blames for causing his problems. The Palestinians blame the Israelis. The Israelis blame the Palestinians. Both are to blame. Hence there being no way out of the present situation.
Of course there are moderate, sane people on both sides that would like the endless killings to stop and for peace to prevail. However, that would entail compromise and the hard-liners on both sides are adamant that compromise will never ever happen because they are right, damn it, and the other side is wrong. For them, the only solution is a final solution. Killing all of Israel, killing all of Palestine....which will never happen though not for want of trying. As long as the people in charge are the people whose "solution" is to kill everyone nothing will change.
Going into this, I knew very little about the history of Israel and Palestine -only what I have gleaned from the news over the years. I'm certainly no expert now, after reading one book, but I do have a much better grasp of what is happening. I recognize names of major players, past & present, and have a rudimentary understanding of how those people interact with each other. I now see how events built upon one another, leading to the huge mess currently happening.
There are a lot of "if-onlys & what-ifs" in this book. The biggest one by far is the issue that arose in the late 1940's when Israel began. The hawks and the doves argued about how to treat the Palestinians who were living there. The doves pushed for something like what the USA was doing for post war Japan- to rebuild and restructure in order to create a healthy, educated populace that would benefit everyone. The hawks were more along the lines of "Screw 'em. They are weak, we don't have to deal with them. Let's go hunt Nazis!" The hawks won. Imagine if, instead of pushing the Palestinians into crowded ghettos with poor infrastructure, few jobs & little healthcare or education, Israel had chosen to work with them. The world would not currently be dealing with all this violence. It was a devastating choice.
Israel has been putting out fires since day one. First they were all about hunting down the Nazis. I am all for that! It was satisfying to read about how Mossad, Shin Bet & AMAN tracked them down. I had to laugh, a bit of black humor, when it was mentioned how once the Israelis tracked down a nazi, they would promise the Nazi to leave them alone & grant a sort of immunity if they would name names and turn on their collaborators. Once the Nazi named names, the Israelis shot him in the head. Psych!
All this Nazi hunting blinded them to the rise of the PLO. I felt bad for the agent who recognized the growing issue and begged his superiors to let him kill all the founding PLO members in one fell swoop. Turns out Israel was secretly paying for the PLO apartment safe house in Berlin so they could bug it & keep track of what was going on. A meeting of all the top officials was happening there. It would have been - ok, not easy, but feasible to kill them all. Israel said no, they didn't want to get Europe mad at them for killing people in a Western country. A big "what-if". What if Arafat, Abu Jihab, etc had been killed. How would things have developed differently.
By the time Israel figured out the PLO was a big problem, the PLO wasn't really the problem anymore. Hezbollah was. However, it was...easier?....to keep the focus on attacking the PLO members rather than the new threat. The story about the murder of PLO leader Abu Jihad was so upsetting to read. Even the agents in charge of tracking him admitted that he was a good man with strong morals who loved his family . But he was on the wrong "team" so he was murdered in front of his wife in their bedroom while his children cried in terror. Wow, I can't even imagine. How terrifying for his family.
A big "if-only" turns out to be that Israel sort of helped/supported the rise of Islamic fundamentalist groups, thinking since Islam is a religion of peace then they wouldn't be a big problem like the PLO, which was a nationalist group wanting it's own separate country from Israel. Wrong!!! Huge mistake. Bigly mistake. It turned out that they weren't really religious but instead were creepy fundamentalists who twisted their religion in order to gain power and control. Just like creepy fundamentalists in all the religions! There is nothing like modifying your religion to support your own desires (see all those Christian "prosperity preachers" for a good American example of that). The imans followed the lead of Iran's Khomeini, who showed them a new path to power. Preaching their way to power. Wow, how convenient of Hezbollah's Fadlallah to tweak the meaning of the commandment to not commit suicide by issuing a fatwa that explained, well, if you commit suicide for us then it's not really suicide and thus okey dokey. Once they started running out of hopeless men willing to kill themselves, Yassin released a new fatwa allowing women and children to be suicide bombers. That is a big take-backsey from a previous edict, stating God didn't allow women & children to be suicide bombers. Wow, that is so convenient how God changed his mind like that!
It was hard to keep track of all the Hebzollah and Hamas members since so many of them were being murdered by Mossad. I found the semantics surrounding the murders fascinating. First they were called assassinations. Then they were called targeted killings. Then they were called interceptions. Then it became targeted preventative acts. It started off being a big deal, Israel choosing to kill someone. The prime minister would meet with the cabinet & discuss it and then sign a "red page". There was a lot of discussion about it and fairly frequently it was decided not to murder someone. However, as the years passed, there was less and less oversight. Once drones came into play, people were getting murdered all the time. There was no time for discussing the legal, moral & ethical issues surrounding the murders. They were used for revenge and punishment, after gruesome suicide bomber incidents, not for any sort of tactical reason. The story of the NIO(intelligence agent) who recoiled at this was insightful. He refused to transmit information to an operations team once he realized they were going to purposefully bomb a building in the middle of the day that had no terrorists or anyone related to terrorists in the building. It was to be a purely revenge attack for a suicide bomber attack in Israel. A tit for tat revenge killing. It was wrong on so many levels and I am impressed that guy stood up for his morals and basically his soul. Of course there was a complete freak out by those in charge and the guy was silently fired.
The biggest weakness of this book was how Bergman spent so much time detailing the atrocities caused by the terrorist groups but very rarely went into detail about the murders of innocent people by the Israelis. It was non stop on both sides. A constant bombardment of murdering civilians. Burning children alive, slamming the heads of toddlers onto rocks, people blown into pieces etc. This was done by both sides. repeatedly. Over and over and over with no end in sight. That was the hardest part of the book, the ceaseless violence for the sake of revenge. I was surprised that the Israelis couldn't figure out why there were so many suicide bombers. Hello! You created them! If you put a man in a totally hopeless situation where his friends and family have been killed, maimed, mentally scarred etc. then yeah, he will be consumed with revenge and want to hurt the people he blames for causing his problems. The Palestinians blame the Israelis. The Israelis blame the Palestinians. Both are to blame. Hence there being no way out of the present situation.
Of course there are moderate, sane people on both sides that would like the endless killings to stop and for peace to prevail. However, that would entail compromise and the hard-liners on both sides are adamant that compromise will never ever happen because they are right, damn it, and the other side is wrong. For them, the only solution is a final solution. Killing all of Israel, killing all of Palestine....which will never happen though not for want of trying. As long as the people in charge are the people whose "solution" is to kill everyone nothing will change.
dansumption's review against another edition
5.0
This book begins in the early 20th century, with Zionist terrorists in Palestine killing the British, Arabs, and the occasional uncooperative Jew. It then traces the history of the Israeli state via its secret services: military, foreign and domestic (AMAN, the Mossad, and Shin Bet), and their operations at home, in Europe, and in hostile countries, particularly Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
A prologue, describing the resignation of Mossad chief Meir Dagan, outlines his logic for carrying out assassinations: by killing a few, key people, military conflict and the necessity for many more deaths is avoided. The end of the book returns to Dagan's enmity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and concludes that although targeted assassinations have produced many tactical successes, they have been a strategic disaster, pushing a political solution ever further away.
This is certainly the sense I got from the book. Over the course of the 20th century each outrage and counter-outrage breeds increasing barbarity and the use of more radical measures by both sides. An eye-for-an-eye really will send the world blind. In particular, Ariel Sharon's blunt measures - the genocide in Lebanon in 1982, protesting at the Temple Mount in 2000, and loosening the controls over targeted killings from 2001 onwards - all seem to have done immeasurable damage to relationships between Israel and the rest of the world.
The book is well over 600 pages (and in the acknowledgemens, Bergman says the manuscript was twice the length) but it never becomes tedious. It's an incredible history, and one which takes a book this length to map out. Being a history of great secrets, one has to ask about the sources and veracity of Bergman's research. He addresses this up front, saying that is based upon thousands of interviews, and acknowledges that some were clearly trying to use him as the conduit for their own versions of events. He describes attempts to disrupt the book and prevent his publication, and makes it clear that it does not meet the Israeli military censor's approval. Strange then that, on reaching the death of Yasser Arafat, Bergman writes "if I knew the answer to the question of what killed Yasser Arafat, I wouldn't be able to write it here in this book, or even be able to write that I know the answer. The military censor in Israel forbids me from discussing this subject."
A prologue, describing the resignation of Mossad chief Meir Dagan, outlines his logic for carrying out assassinations: by killing a few, key people, military conflict and the necessity for many more deaths is avoided. The end of the book returns to Dagan's enmity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and concludes that although targeted assassinations have produced many tactical successes, they have been a strategic disaster, pushing a political solution ever further away.
This is certainly the sense I got from the book. Over the course of the 20th century each outrage and counter-outrage breeds increasing barbarity and the use of more radical measures by both sides. An eye-for-an-eye really will send the world blind. In particular, Ariel Sharon's blunt measures - the genocide in Lebanon in 1982, protesting at the Temple Mount in 2000, and loosening the controls over targeted killings from 2001 onwards - all seem to have done immeasurable damage to relationships between Israel and the rest of the world.
The book is well over 600 pages (and in the acknowledgemens, Bergman says the manuscript was twice the length) but it never becomes tedious. It's an incredible history, and one which takes a book this length to map out. Being a history of great secrets, one has to ask about the sources and veracity of Bergman's research. He addresses this up front, saying that is based upon thousands of interviews, and acknowledges that some were clearly trying to use him as the conduit for their own versions of events. He describes attempts to disrupt the book and prevent his publication, and makes it clear that it does not meet the Israeli military censor's approval. Strange then that, on reaching the death of Yasser Arafat, Bergman writes "if I knew the answer to the question of what killed Yasser Arafat, I wouldn't be able to write it here in this book, or even be able to write that I know the answer. The military censor in Israel forbids me from discussing this subject."
alexatheking's review against another edition
4.0
This is a startling and graphic look at the violence that founded the Israeli secret service, and the long journey it has taken to where it is today. Bergman paints an upsetting but vivid picture, and Rise and Kill First reads almost like a novel. It’s dense but incredibly informative, and is an unusual view into a highly secretive world. I highly recommend for someone interested in learning more about the specific topic, but it’s not for the faint of heart.
stevendedalus's review against another edition
4.0
An incredibly impressive piece of reportage with deep access into the workings of Mossad and the Israeli security apparatus. It chronicles the evolution of Israel's assassination policy as political winds shift and technology and ideology make it easier and easier to kill.
It's depressing to watch it unfold with a momentum no one with power seems to have any desire to stop. Checks are ever so slight and most criticism is only after the critic has left whatever office would have made his criticism effective.
Bergman relies almost exclusively on the Israeli perspective for the merit of the actions, with a bit of faceted perspectives from its allies. You're not going to get a completely balanced portrait: this is a history of internal, not external debates, on the policy of targeted killings.
It acts as a deep fount of Israeli justifications and views, but won't help you understand the whole conflict, just how one side became increasingly seduced by its power to kill so that it sank into a quagmire that looks increasingly inescapable.
It's depressing to watch it unfold with a momentum no one with power seems to have any desire to stop. Checks are ever so slight and most criticism is only after the critic has left whatever office would have made his criticism effective.
Bergman relies almost exclusively on the Israeli perspective for the merit of the actions, with a bit of faceted perspectives from its allies. You're not going to get a completely balanced portrait: this is a history of internal, not external debates, on the policy of targeted killings.
It acts as a deep fount of Israeli justifications and views, but won't help you understand the whole conflict, just how one side became increasingly seduced by its power to kill so that it sank into a quagmire that looks increasingly inescapable.