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A review by jlmb
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman
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.