Book summary “Rise and kill first”: summary

Introduction

You live in a world where democratic states constantly balance national security against legal constraints. When hostile actors threaten your safety from the shadows, conventional military force often proves too clumsy to protect you. You want to understand how intelligence agencies operate when laws fail to stop determined adversaries.

Ronen Bergman investigates the clandestine history of Israel's state-sanctioned killings. Israel has utilized targeted assassinations more extensively than any other Western democracy as a central instrument of national security, rooted in the trauma of the Holocaust and perpetual existential threats. The book reveals the inner workings of secret intelligence agencies and the moral choices behind state violence.

You will discover answers to several critical questions as you read this history:

• How did underground militias evolve into modern intelligence apparatuses?
• What operational failures forced agencies to reform their tactics?
• How do political leaders authorize extrajudicial executions?
• When does state-sponsored killing fail to achieve its strategic goals?

1. Origins of Self Defense and Post Holocaust Vengeance

The modern Hebrew fighting force originated from underground defense groups and post-war revenge operations that established early precedents for targeted extrajudicial action. You trace the operational philosophy back to a Babylonian Talmud adage that preemptive lethal action is required when an enemy threatens your life.

Underground Warfare

Practical Zionism emerged among 35,000 Jews who arrived in Palestine between 1905 and 1914. Emigrants from the Russian empire founded Bar-Giora in 1907 to counter the vulnerability of impoverished Jewish settlements under Ottoman rule. Eight men gathered in a Jaffa apartment on September 29, 1907, to form the secret underground defense group. Radical movements later utilized personal terror to force occupying British authorities out of Palestine.

Lehi operatives David Shomron and Yaakov Banai shot and killed Tom Wilkin, the commander of the British Criminal Investigation Department's Jewish unit, in Jerusalem on September 29, 1944. There were 14 shots fired at Tom Wilkin, with 11 bullets that hit him. Lehi operatives Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri shot British minister Lord Moyne outside his Cairo residence on November 6, 1944, leading to their capture, trial, and hanging. A 17-man force led by Rafi Eitan forced wealthy industrialist and Nazi sympathizer Gotthilf Wagner off a Tel Aviv road on March 22, 1946, and shot him dead.

Post-Holocaust Retribution

Following World War II, a secret unit within the Jewish Brigade executed targeted vengeance operations against former SS members in Europe. Among 38,000 Jews from Palestine who volunteered to serve in the British Army, a secret unit named Gmul hunted down senior Nazis.

Mordechai Gichon and Yisrael Karmi utilized forged British and German identities to track, interrogate, and execute between 100 and 200 people killed by Gmul between May and July. You follow specific operational methods developed during these missions:

• Use a reverse choke hold while falling backward on a mattress to instantly suffocate a target and break their neck quietly.
• Interrogate cooperative informants to compile detailed lists of SS and Gestapo officials including names, dates of birth, education, and positions.

2. Institutionalization of Intelligence and Repraid Raids

Faced with an impending Arab attack and numerical inferiority, the Haganah launched targeted killing operations against political and military leaders. Operation Starling targeted twenty-three leaders of the Palestinian Arabs to eliminate leadership, strike political centers, and hit economic hubs. However, most bids failed due to faulty intelligence or unskilled hit men.

Hassan Salameh, a prominent commander of Palestinian forces, was the top target of Operation Starling, but multiple assassination attempts against him failed until he died in combat in June 1948.

Specialized elite units within the Palmach conducted clandestine operations, sabotage, and targeted killings disguised as Arabs or British soldiers. Units like the Palyam naval company and the Arab Platoon executed silent operations and deep-cover sabotage because they were the only well-trained forces available to the Haganah.

Members of the Arab Platoon disguised themselves as workers and detonated a bomb next to an Arab garage in Haifa, destroying an ambulance packed with explosives and killing five Palestinians.

The Intelligence Triad

Following statehood, David Ben-Gurion established a permanent three-pronged intelligence community to ensure national survival under siege. Ben-Gurion formed AMAN for military intelligence, Shin Bet for internal security, and the Political Department for foreign espionage and covert activities, centralizing immense power under his direct control.

On June 7, 1948, Ben-Gurion summoned his top aides to set up these permanent structures, operating in a shadow realm without parliamentary oversight or a formal legal basis.

A new security apparatus arose immediately to protect the state, establishing an absolute taboo against killing fellow Jews.

Bound by a deep tradition of mutual responsibility and familial connection among Jews, leaders like Isser Harel enforced an iron rule prohibiting the extrajudicial execution of Jewish traitors after statehood. When Israeli Navy Captain Alexander Yisraeli attempted to sell top-secret documents to Egypt in Rome, Harel organized an abduction operation rather than a hit, though Yisraeli tragically died of a seizure during transport.

Unit 101 and Reprisals

Frustrated by the inability of intelligence and regular forces to stop cross-border fedayeen infiltration, Ariel Sharon formed Unit 101 to execute aggressive retaliatory commando raids. Sharon instituted rigorous training, relaxed discipline, and flexible tactics, shifting from pinpoint intelligence-based hits to punitive raids designed to raise the price for Israeli blood and terrorize hostile border villages.

In October 1953, Sharon led Unit 101 in the Qibya raid, blowing up forty-three houses and resulting in the deaths of at least sixty-nine civilians, drawing international condemnation.

Moshe Dayan and David Ben-Gurion escalated security tactics by ordering the targeted assassination of the Egyptian officers orchestrating the fedayeen attacks. Under operational order Eunuch, AMAN used double agents and booby-trapped books manufactured by explosives expert Natan Rotberg to eliminate Egyptian intelligence handlers across enemy lines.

Egyptian intelligence captain Mustafa Hafez was killed in Gaza when he opened a booby-trapped book containing Morse code ciphers delivered by a double agent, and Salah Mustafa was similarly killed in Amman by a booby-trapped copy of Achtung Panzer!

You apply specific operational methods developed during these missions:

• Deliver a thick book containing a concealed explosive device through a trusted agent or mail service.
• Ensure the trigger mechanism uses a metal arm, marble, and strong spring that activates when wrappers and ribbons are removed.

3. Global Operations and the German Scientists Crisis

Faced with foreign weapons programs and regional missile threats, Israeli intelligence expanded its periphery doctrine, abducted war criminals, and dismantled adversarial R&D networks.

Following the political fallout of the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the Mossad under Isser Harel established hidden links with countries outside the immediate ring of hostile Arab states, as well as with internal minorities fighting those adversaries. The Mossad formed a tripartite intelligence alliance code-named Trident between Israel, the shah's Iran, and Turkey, which exchanged large amounts of intelligence and carried out joint operations funded partly by the CIA.

In 1960, a team of Mossad operatives tracked Adolf Eichmann to Buenos Aires, where he lived under the alias Ricardo Klement, subdued him at a bus stop, and smuggled him to Israel in an El Al plane. Instead of executing a fugitive war criminal quietly, Israeli leadership mandated that he be kidnapped, brought to trial, and exposed publicly to create an ineradicable memory of the Holocaust through the legal process.

The German Scientists Crisis

In 1962, Israel was stunned to learn that Egypt was testing surface-to-surface missiles developed with the assistance of German scientists who had previously worked on Nazi rocketry at Peenemünde, causing existential panic among Israeli leaders. On July 21, 1962, Egyptian newspapers reported the successful test launch of Al-Zafer and Al-Qaher missiles, which was followed by a military parade in Cairo reviewed by President Nasser.

Unit 188 and Mossad developers utilized flexible Detasheet explosives inside mail items designed to detonate upon extraction of the contents rather than opening, targeting former Nazis and scientists assisting foreign missile programs. On November 27, 1962, Hannelore Wende opened a letter bomb intended for German scientist Wolfgang Pilz, losing fingers and suffering severe facial and eye injuries.

Recruitment of Otto Skorzeny

Under Meir Amit's leadership, the Mossad bypassed deep emotional objections to recruit former SS officer Otto Skorzeny by leveraging his ties to German scientists in Egypt and offering him a clean Austrian passport, money, and lifetime immunity. In September 1964, Avraham Ahituv met Otto Skorzeny in Madrid, where Skorzeny agreed to establish a phantom network to gather intelligence on the Egyptian missile project in exchange for personal protection and legal exoneration.

Armed with intelligence gathered through Skorzeny and wiretapped meetings in Madrid, Israeli leaders presented concrete proof to West German politicians, who then intervened to offer domestic aerospace jobs to engineers, starving the Egyptian project of essential guidance system experts. In December 1964, Shimon Peres and Raphi Medan met with West German politician Franz Josef Strauss for six hours, presenting detailed evidence that prompted Ludwig Bölkow to hire away the Hellige factory scientists.

4. Rebuilding Caesarea and Counter Terrorism Tactics

Following early operational failures and scandals, Mike Harari completely overhauled the Caesarea special operations division by instituting rigorous recruitment, strict getaway planning, and target committees.

Meir Amit consolidated clandestine sabotage and targeted killing units into a single unified division within the Mossad named Caesarea. Amit transferred Unit 188 from AMAN and merged it with Mifratz. He appointed Yosef Yariv as head and Shamir as deputy.

Overhauling Caesarea

Mike Harari served as deputy head for five years and then took over as head of Caesarea starting in 1970 from the eleventh floor of 2 Kaplan Street, Tel Aviv. He established hundreds of commercial front companies worldwide. You could use a shipping company front to covertly load meat packages and conduct espionage off the coast of Yemen.

Harari instituted strict rules for every mission:

• Give the exact same weight to the operational goal and the getaway plan during preparation.
• Execute an operation only if there is a guaranteed way of getting out in one piece.
• Never carry out slayings in close contact using knives or other cold weapons.
• Establish a targets committee to conduct in-depth studies before placing names on the hit list.

Rigorous Screening

The Mossad maintained a 0.1 percent acceptance rate for operational jobs in the Mossad. Recruiters preferred adult immigrants who did not need fake backgrounds so you could pass as Western tourists or businessmen in Arab countries.

Candidates faced intense selection protocols:

• Screen candidate populations through combat roles in the IDF, diplomats' children, and adult immigrants.
• Conduct initial polygraph tests followed by intensive background checks, occasionally traveling abroad to investigate candidates.
• Approach prospects via government employees in cafes or send cryptic letters from the Prime Minister's office.
• Subject accepted candidates to psychological evaluations and simulated arrests with brutal interrogations to test their cover under pressure.

Recruits like Kurtz were sent to Jerusalem to shadow diplomats. Operatives posing as police ambushed him, handcuffed him, and subjected him to three and a half days of sensory deprivation and physical abuse in the Russian Compound.

5. The Rise of Palestinian Militancy and Gaza Pacification

The expulsion of 600,000 to 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948-1949 war created radicalized refugee populations that birthed modern Palestinian nationalist guerrilla movements. Displaced families settled in squalid camps with no rights or prospects. Young militants organized nationalist movements driven by self-pride and hatred of Israel.

The emergence of Fatah and independent guerrilla movements forced Israel to adapt its military doctrines, leading to ruthless pacification campaigns and undercover operations in the Gaza Strip.

Khalil al-Wazir was deported from Ramla to Gaza in 1948 and formed a youth militant group at age sixteen. He learned from 1948 war veterans before launching sabotage operations. Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad founded the Palestine Liberation Movement in secret on October 10, 1959, to pursue independent armed struggle and codified their foundational hostility toward Zionism.

Fatah carried out its first terror attack on January 1, 1965, attempting to bomb Israel's National Water Carrier. The operation failed completely when police intercepted the operatives. Israeli intelligence initially dismissed Fatah as insignificant student thugs.

Sayeret Matkal commandos attacked the Karameh base on March 21, 1968, but met fierce resistance. Thirty-three Israelis, 61 Jordanians, and over 100 Palestinians died in the Karameh battle, allowing Arafat to frame the fight as a heroic stand. Desperate to eliminate Arafat, Israeli intelligence approved a bizarre psychological experiment to brainwash a Palestinian prisoner.

A Palestinian prisoner named Fatkhi was subjected to three months of hypnosis and conditioned to shoot at pictures of Arafat. He surrendered to police upon crossing the river on December 19, 1968, zero hour set for him to cross the Jordan River.

Sayeret Rimon in Gaza

Ariel Sharon and Meir Dagan broke conventional military doctrine in the Gaza Strip by utilizing undercover special units and extrajudicial killings to systematically crush local terrorism. Following the horrific murder of the Aroyo children by a Fatah grenade, General Sharon was given a free hand to pacify Gaza.

Meir Dagan commanded Sayeret Rimon, an undercover unit that reached 150 soldiers at its height. Operatives dressed as Arabs, infiltrated refugee camps, and eliminated targets on sight.

• The unit hunted down wanted militants using brutal methods and point-blank assassinations.
• Operations targeted black targets and red targets while employing dead-checking.

Military governor Yitzhak Pundak threatened to resign and clashed bitterly with Ariel Sharon over ruthless tactics. He accused Sharon of war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, pointing to the January 1972 expulsion of thousands of Bedouin from a 2,500-acre area south of Rafah. Dagan's unit reduced 400 wanted men to 10 in Gaza by 1972. Only 37 terror attacks originated in Gaza in 1972, down from hundreds in previous years.

6. Global Terror and the Munich Massacre Response

The international escalation of airline hijackings and the tragic Munich Olympics massacre prompted Prime Minister Golda Meir to authorize worldwide targeted assassinations through the Kidon and Bayonet units.

Global Hijackings

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine shifted its attacks to international aviation to maximize global publicity and force concessions from Israel. On July 23, 1968, PFLP terrorists hijacked El Al Flight 426 from Rome to Algiers, eventually forcing Israel to trade twenty-four prisoners for twelve Israeli hostages. The flight was at 33,000 feet altitude when it changed course. The incident involved 38 passengers, 12 of them Israelis, and 10 Israeli crew members.

Leila Khaled became a globally recognized symbol for the militant Palestinian movement. On August 29, 1969, Leila Khaled helped hijack TWA Flight 840, directing the captain to fly over Haifa before landing in Damascus, where the plane's nose was blown off. The flight carried 120 passengers, only 6 of them Israelis. Khaled was born in 1944 and joined the Jordanian branch of George Habash's movement at age 15.

Massive coordinated hijackings by the PFLP in September 1970 led to a brutal crackdown by Jordan against Palestinian militants. On September 6, 1970, four Popular Front squads successfully hijacked Pan Am, Swissair, and TWA planes, landing them in Jordan and demanding the release of imprisoned comrades. The crisis left 55 Jews and a male crew member held hostage in Amman and caused thousands of deaths during Black September.

Israel successfully countered an airline hijacking at Lod Airport using specialized commando tactics rather than giving in to hostage demands. On May 8, 1972, Sayeret Matkal commandos dressed in white airport ground crew overalls stormed the Sabena plane, killing or wounding all the terrorists quickly. The aircraft carried 94 passengers and 7 crew members, while the attackers demanded the release of 315 terrorist comrades imprisoned in Israel. Barak's team carried concealed .22 pistols.

International terrorist cooperation allowed the Japanese Red Army to carry out a devastating surprise attack on civilians at Lod Airport. On May 30, 1972, Japanese Red Army operatives pulled AK-47s and grenades from their luggage at Lod Airport, killing twenty-six people, including seventeen Puerto Rican Christian pilgrims. The attack left 26 people dead and 78 wounded, with 25 people piled up in a pool of blood near conveyor belt number three.

Operation Bayonet

Mike Harari established the Kidon unit within Caesarea to handle covert surveillance and selective execution of human targets in democratic countries. Recruits for Kidon were tested by being sent back into their own neighborhoods in disguise and under alias; if they circulated without being recognized, they passed. The nucleus of Bayonet began to take shape in the mid-1969 period.

Kidon operatives completed rigorous preparation:

• Engage in rapid movement, driving cars or motorbikes
• Master tailing and getting rid of tails
• Practice breaking into buildings and hand-to-hand combat
• Drill in pistol marksmanship using instinct shooting
• Apply specialized makeup and wigs that remain secure during physical fights or rooftop chases

The Munich Olympics massacre exposed the total incompetence of German security forces and resulted in the murder of eleven Israeli athletes. On September 5, 1972, terrorists stormed Connollystrasse 31, murdering wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weight lifter Yossef Romano, and eventually blowing up the helicopters carrying the remaining hostages. The assault involved 8 members of Black September and 32 policemen in the village, only 2 of whom carried handguns.

Outraged by the Munich massacre and European inaction, Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized the Mossad to conduct targeted killings on foreign soil. On September 11, 1972, the Israeli cabinet authorized the prime minister to approve targets even in friendly countries without notifying local authorities. Meir then addressed the Knesset on September 12 regarding striking terrorists anywhere.

7. Operation Spring of Youth and the Lillehammer Fiasco

While major multi-target operations like Spring of Youth demonstrated elite commando proficiency, intelligence blunders such as the Lillehammer fiasco exposed the severe risks of foreign operations.

Operation Spring of Youth

Operation Spring of Youth marked the first time the Mossad and the IDF cooperated in a large-scale ground assault inside a hostile Arab capital. Because top PLO leaders were heavily sheltered in Beirut, Caesarea could not act alone. Utilizing intelligence gathered by a female operative code-named Yael, Sayeret Matkal commandos landed via naval dinghies and executed high-ranking targets in multiple simultaneous raids.

Ehud Barak disguised himself in women's clothing as part of a small fifteen-man team that infiltrated Verdun Street in Beirut, successfully killing PLO leaders Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser. Clovis Francis, an agent known as Model, supplied approximately 100000 photographs to Israeli intelligence over the years. A total of 50 people died during Operation Spring of Youth, almost all PLO members.

The Lillehammer Debacle

The Mossad committed a catastrophic intelligence failure in Lillehammer, Norway, assassinating an innocent Moroccan waiter instead of primary target Ali Hassan Salameh. Despite doubts raised by some operatives regarding the target's identity and lack of operational caution, leadership pushed forward with the hit. Seven operatives made a positive identification of the target in the street before hit men Shaul and Y. shot Ahmed Bouchiki 8 times.

Sylvia Rafael and Dan Arbel were among the Mossad operatives arrested by Norwegian authorities after Arbel left evidence and rental car documents behind, leading to a public trial that embarrassed Israel. Following the Lillehammer debacle, Mike Harari offered his resignation to Golda Meir. Instead of accepting it, Meir invited him to her apartment in north Tel Aviv, made him tea, and cheered him up.

8. The Yom Kippur War and Counterterrorism Resurgence

Strategic hubris preceding the Yom Kippur War was followed by domestic terrorist tragedies and daring counterterrorism rescues such as the Entebbe raid.

Following Operation Spring of Youth, Israeli leaders mistakenly projected pinpoint success onto the entire military. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Elazar dismissed massive troop movements and war games by Egypt and Syria as mere exercises, leading to the severe surprise of the Yom Kippur War. On October 6, Egypt threw 2,200 tanks, 2,900 armored personnel carriers, and 2,400 artillery pieces into battle, while 60,000 Syrian troops, 1,400 tanks, and 800 guns invaded the Golan Heights. The conflict ultimately claimed the lives of 2,300 Israeli soldiers.

In May 1974, three DFLP members crossed the border six miles from the frontier, killed a family, and took eighty-five teenagers and ten adults hostage at the Netiv Meir school in Maalot. Sayeret Matkal botched the rescue raid by entering the wrong room, causing the deaths of twenty-two children, eighteen girls, four adult hostages, and one soldier, while sixty-eight people were wounded. Prime Minister Golda Meir was subsequently replaced by fifty-two-year-old Yitzhak Rabin on June 3, 1974. On March 5, 1975, eight Abu Jihad operatives seized the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, prompting a 5:16 A.M. raid by forty-four commandos that rescued eleven hostages but left eight civilians and three soldiers dead.

The Entebbe Model

Waide Haddad recruited West Germany's Red Army Faction members to bypass security restrictions. West German RAF members Thomas Reuter and Brigitte Schulz traveled to a PFLP training camp near Aden to participate in a plot to shoot down an El Al plane in Nairobi.

Cooperation with local intelligence services can thwart complex international terror plots and pioneer modern extrajudicial renditions.

Operation Heartburn involved seventeen Israelis flying to Nairobi on January 23, 1976, where local forces apprehended the PFLP and RAF cell, subsequently transferring the five suspects to Israel on stretchers after a six-hour flight.

Operation Heartburn

Wadie Haddad orchestrated the hijacking of an Air France flight to Entebbe, Uganda, with the backing of Idi Amin. On June 27, 1976, at 1:45 P.M., the Air France plane took off from Lod with eighty-three Israelis on board, traveling 2,200 miles to Entebbe.

• Non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers numbering 209 were released by operatives.
• Twelve Air France crew members insisted on staying.
• Fifty-three freedom fighters were demanded in exchange.

On July 3, Rabin gave the green light for the raid, requesting three minutes for execution. Sayeret Matkal commandos landed in C-130 Hercules transport planes, stormed the terminal using a decoy black Mercedes resembling Idi Amin's car, destroyed eight Ugandan Air Force MiG fighters on the runway, and rescued one hundred people.

10 Key Ideas

1. The modern Hebrew fighting force originated from underground defense groups and post-war revenge operations that established early precedents for targeted extrajudicial action.
2. A new security apparatus arose immediately to protect the state, establishing an absolute taboo against killing fellow Jews.
3. Faced with foreign weapons programs and regional missile threats, Israeli intelligence expanded its periphery doctrine, abducted war criminals, and dismantled adversarial R&D networks.
4. Following early operational failures and scandals, Mike Harari completely overhauled the Caesarea special operations division by instituting rigorous recruitment, strict getaway planning, and target committees.
5. The emergence of Fatah and independent guerrilla movements forced Israel to adapt its military doctrines, leading to ruthless pacification campaigns and undercover operations in the Gaza Strip.
6. The international escalation of airline hijackings and the tragic Munich Olympics massacre prompted Prime Minister Golda Meir to authorize worldwide targeted assassinations through the Kidon and Bayonet units.
7. While major multi-target operations like Spring of Youth demonstrated elite commando proficiency, intelligence blunders such as the Lillehammer fiasco exposed the severe risks of foreign operations.
8. Strategic hubris preceding the Yom Kippur War was followed by domestic terrorist tragedies and daring counterterrorism rescues such as the Entebbe raid.
9. Cooperation with local intelligence services can thwart complex international terror plots and pioneer modern extrajudicial renditions.
10. Israel has utilized targeted assassinations more extensively than any other Western democracy as a central instrument of national security, rooted in the trauma of the Holocaust and perpetual existential threats.