JERUSALEM – Since World War II, Israel and its pre-state paramilitaryorganisations have assassinated more people than any other country in theWestern world, writes Ronen Bergman in his book, *Rise and Kill First: TheSecret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations*. The Jewish nation hascarried out some 2,300 “targeted killing operations,” mostly againstPalestinians since it was established. Bergman, a senior defencecorrespondent for *Yedioth Ahronoth*, Israel’s largest daily newspaper,painstakingly rebuilds this bloody history across 753 pages.
It’s not an easy task to write about the untold history of Israel’s secretassassinations, particularly given that the military establishment isextremely wary when it comes to sensitive security issues. But Bergman hasinterviewed hundreds of sources for the book, building a comprehensivehistorical narrative on how Israel uses killing as a tactic against itsrivals.
Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups hadused terror as a tactic against the British who were administering thehistoric Palestine. They carried out a campaign of bombings and killings.Several of these paramilitary leaders, including Yitzhak Shamir andMenachem Begin, later became establishment figures. They brought in theirguerrilla and terror tactics into the security establishment. And from theearly days, assassination became an accepted tool, writes Bergman.
Now, the Directorate of Military Intelligence, the Mossad spy agency andthe Shin Bet internal security service, make up “the most robuststreamlined assassination machine in history.” They have carried out aseries of daunting missions, like the assassination of those who killedIsraeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 1976 commando raid atthe Entebbe airfield in Uganda. But in the long run, Bergman questions boththe strategic benefits and the ethical side of this policy. He lists outsome examples such as the assassination of Abu Jihad, one of the closelieutenants of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The killing was a tactical victory for Israel over the Palestine LiberationOrganisation, but it had strengthened the local PLO factions in theoccupied territories in the midst of the first intifada. Likewise, theassassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004 made the Islamistorganisation more vulnerable to Iranian influence.
Bergman also says a policy which was conceived as a military tactic forsurvival later became “the core principle of Israel’s security doctrine.”The killing of innocent civilians was called “accidental damage,” while thetargeted murders became known as “targeted preventive acts.”
“You get used to killing. Human life becomes something plain, easy todispose of,” Ami Ayalon, who headed Shin Bet in the 1990s, tells Bergman.“I call it the banality of evil.” His words capture the mood of the book aswell.