Poisoned
toothpaste and exploding phones: Israel linked to 2,700 assassination
operations in 70 years
Over het boek: Rise and kill first.
Over het boek: Rise and kill first.
De bron is een Canadese website/krant
die even openhartig is over joodse zaken
als Haaretz in Israel, zo is mijn indruk. Het schrijft voor joods publiek. Daarom
treffen we hier een recensie van eenIsraelisch boek aan die we verder nergerns
hebben gezien.
A new book also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation
poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its
officials have consistently denied
In this Monday, Feb. 23, 2015 file photo Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks past a window overlooking the Old City of
Jerusalem.AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner
Bloomberg News
Ethan Bronner
January 27, 2018
Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target’s
life. Armed drones. Exploding cell phones. Spare tires with remote-control
bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of
Islamic holy men.
A new book chronicles these techniques and asserts that
Israel has carried out at least 2,700 assassination operations in its 70 years
of existence. While many failed, they add up to far more than any other Western
country, the book says.
Ronen Bergman, the intelligence correspondent for Yediot
Aharonot newspaper, persuaded many agents of Mossad, Shin Bet and the military
to tell their stories, some using their real names. The result is the first
comprehensive look at Israel’s use of state-sponsored killings.
Based on 1,000 interviews and thousands of documents, and
running more than 600 pages, “Rise and Kill First” makes the case that Israel
has used assassination in the place of war, killing half a dozen Iranian
nuclear scientists, for instance, rather than launching a military attack. It
also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser
Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its officials have consistently
denied.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat speaks at the signing of
the Wye Peace Accord in the West Room of the White House in Washington on
October 23, 1998. Dennis Brack / Bloomberg
Bergman writes that Arafat’s death in 2004 fit a pattern and
had advocates. But he steps back from flatly asserting what happened, saying
that Israeli military censorship prevents him from revealing what – or if – he
knows.
The book’s title comes from the ancient Jewish Talmud
admonition, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” Bergman
says a huge percentage of the people he interviewed cited that passage as
justification for their work. So does an opinion by the military’s lawyer
declaring such operations to be legitimate acts of war.
Despite the many interviews, including with former prime
ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Bergman, the author of several books,
says the Israeli secret services sought to interfere with his work, holding a
meeting in 2010 on how to disrupt his research and warning former Mossad employees
not to speak with him.
He says that while the U.S. has tighter constraints on its
agents than does Israel, President George W. Bush adopted many Israeli
techniques after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and President Barack
Obama launched several hundred targeted killings.
If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first
“The command-and-control systems, the war rooms, the methods
of information gathering and the technology of the pilotless aircraft, or
drones, that now serve the Americans and their allies were all in large part
developed in Israel,” Bergman writes.
The book gives a textured history of the personalities and
tactics of the various secret services. In the 1970s, a new head of operations
for Mossad opened hundreds of commercial companies overseas with the idea that
they might be useful one day. For example, Mossad created a Middle Eastern
shipping business that, years later, came in handy in providing cover for a
team in the waters off Yemen.
There have been plenty of failures. After a Palestinian
terrorist group killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel
sent its agents to kill the perpetrators – and shot more than one misidentified
man. There were also successful operations that did more harm than good to
Israel’s policy goals, Bergman notes.
Zev Chafets: If Israel played by America’s rules, Iraq and
Syria would have nuclear weapons
How a high-ranking Nazi ended up becoming a killer spy for
Israel in the 1960s
Jeffrey Collins: Israeli intelligence increasingly worried
about Netanyahu’s focus on Iran
Bergman raises moral and legal concerns provoked by
state-sponsored killing, including the existence of separate legal systems for
secret agents and the rest of Israel. But he presents the operations, for the
most part, as achieving their aims. While many credit the barrier Israel built
along and inside the West Bank with stopping assaults on Israeli citizens in
the early 2000s, he argues that what made the difference was “a massive number
of targeted killings of terrorist operatives.”
One of Bergman’s most important sources was Meir Dagan, a
recent head of Mossad for eight years who died in early 2016. Toward the end of
his career, Dagan fell out with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu partly over
launching a military attack on Iran. Netanyahu said intelligence techniques
such as selling the country faulty parts for its reactors – which Israel and
the U.S. were doing – weren’t enough.
Dagan argued back that these techniques, especially
assassinations, would do the job. As Bergman quotes him saying, “In a car,
there are 25,000 parts on average. Imagine if 100 of them are missing. It would
be very hard to make it go. On the other hand, sometimes it’s most effective to
kill the driver, and that’s that.”
--------------------------------------Nog een verslag over dit boek:
De gele tekst verwijstnaar de
Talmud,waar het idee op gebaseerd is.
Het lijkt natuurlijk ook op de
doctrine van de pre-emptive strike.
Onderstrepingen zijn door JV
gemaakt.
‘Rise and Kill First’: Israel’s Hidden Assassinations
By Koushik Das
February 03, 2018 "Information Clearing
House" - Poisoning toothpaste….triggering explosion through cell phones…… bombs
dropped from flying drones! Since its creation in 1948, Israel has carried out
nearly 2,700 ‘secret’ assassination operations in the last 70 years. Although
many of these attempts have not been successful, the success rate of Israel is
far better than the Western countries.
After a long interaction with the Israeli spies, journalist Ronen Bergman
has penned a book – ‘Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of
Israel’s Targeted Assassinations’. In his publication based on 1,000 interviews
and thousands of documents, Bergman narrates various ‘strange’ methods –
adopted by the Israeli spies over the years – to eliminate personalities who in
some way or the other proved to be threat to them.
Before writing the book, the 45-year-old Israeli journalist met a number of
agents of Mossad and Shin Bet – the two intelligence organisations of his
country. Bergman also interviewed some senior Army officers who were allegedly
involved in such ‘expeditions’. The 600-page book has enough information to
‘surprise’ the readers.
The essence of those secret missions
of Israel was: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first” (an ancient Jewish Talmud
admonition). The Army officers argue that such missions help avoid
‘costly’ warfare. They claim that a person will die within a month, if
someone mixes poison in his/her toothpaste. Bergman – the intelligence
correspondent for ‘Yediot Aharonot’ daily – mentions in his book that Mossad
killed an Iranian nuclear scientist by using this method. An Israeli Army
officer has admitted that they killed at least 12 Iranian scientists through
various methods after receiving the information that Tehran was secretly
implementing nuclear programmes. He further revealed that Mossad assassinated
an Iranian scientist through explosives kept in the spare tyre of his car. The
Israeli intelligence agency killed another Iranian scientist by dropping a bomb
on his car from a home-made drone.
Israel also killed a number of Islamist leaders who backed the Palestinian
movement. Interestingly, Bergman’s publication hints that the Israeli spies
secretly killed former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on November 11,
2004. However, it has not been possible for the author to narrate the death of
Arafat in his book. Bergman said that Israeli military censorship prevented him
from revealing the facts.
Koushik Das, based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, is a senior news
editor with more than 15 years of experience. He also runs a blog - Boundless
Ocean of Politics. E-Mail: koushik@inserbia.info
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