Book Review: Rise and Kill: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations
As I write this, Israel is in the midst of its greatest civil unrest in years, maybe ever. This post isn’t about that. It also isn’t (directly at least) about the occupation. It is about a remarkable book on Israel’s targeted assassination campaigns written by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman called Rise and Kill First.
Starting with killings by paramilitary forces even before the state is founded, Rise and Kill first is an exhaustive look at nearly every assassination carried out in purported defense of Israel. In documenting everything from the killing of British soldiers during the Mandate through to assassinations in Europe, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, Bergman received unprecedented access to those who made the decisions to kill, and those who carried out the orders.
There is no way to read this book and not be both affected by the rationale of those who ordered the killings (“we will never be on our knees again”) nor alarmed by the often cavalier attitude towards human life. Bergman documents it all with an unwavering eye on what happened, leaving the morality of it largely to the reader. Is it ethical to kill a man responsible for scores of terrorists attacks that killed dozens of innocents? Is it worth a risk to innocent lives to do so? It’s one thing to wrestle with these questions in the abstract, it’s another to read the recollections of those who made these decisions, and had to live with the consequences.
More than anything, it’s a book about trauma and what that does to a person, and a people. Over and over those who carry out the assassinations talk about the Holocaust. The family they lost in it, the lessons they learned from it. It reminded me in many ways of the collective trauma documented in the remarkable book on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Say Nothing. There young men and women kill each other, and sometimes innocent civilians, as they war over the fate of Ireland. Here, young men and women kill each other over the fate of Israel and Palestine. They do horrific things, they justify it as in furtherance of a noble mission, and then they have to live with what they’ve done.
I’m reminded of the essential “rebel song” the Patriot Game, which recounts the death of Fergal O'Hanlon in the Border Campaign of the 1950s. Written by Dominic Behan and told from O’Hanlon’s perspective, it includes the line:
Come all ye young rebels and list while I sing
For love of one's country is a terrible thing
It banishes fear like the speed of a flame
And it makes you a part of the patriot's game
Rise and Kill first is not always an easy book to read. It can be horrifying and, at times, almost tedious in its encyclopedic recitation of the facts, but it’s stuck with me. Well worth the time.
Recommended.