A number of journalists, historians, and photographers were extremely collegial toward me and helped with advice and with archival material: Ilana Dayan, Itai Vered, Yarin Kimor, Yoram Meital, Shlomo Nakdimon, Dov Alfon, Klaus Wiegrefe, Zeev Drori, Motti Golani, Benny Morris, Nir Mann, Shachar Bar-On, Yoav Gelber, Ehud Yaari, Ziv Koren, Alex Levac, and the late Aaron Klein. Thanks are also due to Tal Miller and Lior Yaakovi for their research in the early stages and to Haim Watzman, Ira Moskowitz, and Deborah Cher for translation and editing during that period.
Attorneys Eitan Maoz, Jack Chen, and Dvorah Chen gave me good and important advice on various legal matters.
My travels in pursuit of information about secret Israeli operations now provide me with the pleasant duty of extending my thanks to various people around the world: to Gunther Latsch, for picking through the Stasi files; to Robert Baer and the late Stanley Bedlington, for helping me to better understand the nooks and crannies of the CIA; to Crispin Thorold and Marianne El Hajj of the Special Tribunal on the murder of Rafik Hariri in The Hague, for the astonishing material about Hezbollah’s death squads; to the Israel Defense Forces’ 202 Paratroop Battalion, for protection against Hamas’s attempts to blow up the house in the Nablus casbah we were in; to Aql al-Hashem, who extricated us from an exchange of fire in southern Lebanon (and who was sure he was bulletproof until he was killed by a Hezbollah IED); to the Argentinean special prosecutor, the late Alberto Nisman, who allowed me to witness his struggle to discover the truth about the explosion of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires without knowing that he would be that incident’s next victim; to “J.,” who accompanied me to the Triple Frontier zone at Ciudad del Este and insisted that we immediately leave the mosque of the cousin of the Hezbollah secretary general; to Calder Walton, who shared his groundbreaking research on British intelligence and the Jewish underground militias in Mandatory Palestine; to my mentor at Cambridge University, Professor Christopher Andrew, for the road map to the KGB documents in the Mitrokhin Archive, which he was the first to reveal; to “Ethan,” “Iftach,” and “Advantage,” who provided much advice and guidance and helped me establish the intricate web of connections that was the foundation of much of the information that appears in this book.
Special, heartfelt thanks to my friend and colleague Holger Stark, for his assistance vis-à-vis the German intelligence and defense establishment, as well as the support, joint projects, friendship, and many secrets we have shared and trusted no one but each other with. My agent in Germany, Hannah Leitgeb, and the journalist and editor Georg Mascolo contributed greatly to the publication of the German translation of the book by DVA/Spiegel. Many thanks to both of them, as well as to DVA’s staff, especially Julia Hoffmann and Karen Guddas.
The Zen scholar Professor Jacob Raz, a truly enlightened person, tried to teach me the art of brevity. The book’s size, half the length of the original manuscript, is proof that he at least partially succeeded.
Finally, I thank my interviewees and sources for the time, the effort, the willingness, and—in some cases—the great risks they took upon themselves. This includes those whom I have sharply criticized and those whose descriptions of their deeds made my blood curdle. They all opened their memories and their hearts to me, so I could see and tell my readers about the inevitable, violent, and sometimes irreconcilable clash between a nation’s need to defend itself and the fundamental principles of democracy and morality.
The best parts of the book are due to all the people I have listed above. The errors are all mine, and my responsibility.
A NOTE ON THE SOURCES
Efforts to persuade the Israeli defense establishment The IDF and Defense Ministry Archive (which includes the archive of AMAN) allowed access to only a small number of files, and in them only materials that originated in open media—in other words, zero relevant original documents. The Shin Bet agreed only to send a number of tables regarding terror attacks and data about a few specific terrorists, but refused to reveal any facts about its own actions. The Mossad does not maintain any relations with the media. Efforts to secure the cooperation of its special operations division, Caesarea, also failed. Responding to my request for an interview, the unit’s historian, Y., told me, “Even if I were the last person in the intelligence establishment who has not yet made the pilgrimage to you, I would by no means cooperate with you. I despise whoever it was who gave you my phone number, just as I despise you.” (Exchange of text messages with Y., August 15, 2015.)
A petition to the Supreme Court Supreme Court HCOJ [Bagatz] 4801/07, Dr. Ronen Bergman and Yedioth Ahronoth v. the Prime Minister’s Office, the Defense Ministry Director General, the Mossad and Director of the Mossad, the Shin Bet and Director of the Shin Bet, and the Atomic Energy Commission.
The defense establishment did not merely sit The research led to the uncovering of spying activity by people close to the chief of staff against the minister of defense, Ehud Barak, which were described later in my book The Pit (written with journalist Dan Margalit). Uri Misgav, “Ex-CoS Gabi Ashkenazi Pressed the Shin Bet to Open an Investigation Against a Journalist,” Haaretz, November 29, 2013. Richard Silverstein, “IDF Chief Threatened Journalist with Espionage for Exposing Rampant Military Corruption,” Tikun Olam, December 20, 2013, https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/12/20/idf-chief-threatened-journalist-with-espionage-for-exposing-rampant-military-corruption/.
None of the thousand interviews Most of the interviews were held after work on the book began in 2010, and a smaller number were conducted as part of research for other projects in the two preceding decades. None of them were officially sanctioned.
PROLOGUE
Dagan had no love for the media Interview with Meir Dagan, May 29, 2013.
making him very angry Because of these published reports of mine, Dagan got Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to order the Shin Bet to conduct comprehensive surveillance to find the source of the leaks, including tapping the phones of the heads of various Mossad divisions. In the wake of this investigation, Dagan ousted his then deputy, whom he accused of leaking information despite his vigorous denials. Ronen Bergman, “Dismissal at Mossad’s High Command,” Yedioth Ahronoth, July 10, 2007.
The tension between the two men Interview with “Eldy,” June 2014, and “Nietzsche,” July 2007.
The numbers speak for themselves These figures relate to all of the assassination operations about which information was gathered in the research conducted for this book, most of which are mentioned in it. However, calculating the numbers is a complex matter, because sometimes the target of an operation is a mixed one—both enemy offices and compounds and specific persons. The number here includes the actions of the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, a terrorist organization that Israel ran in Lebanon in the years 1980–83, and which on its own attacked many PLO members and Palestinian civilians, as well as the unsuccessful attempts by Operation Salt Fish to kill Arafat, which cost the lives of many civilians. Because much of the material locked away in the intelligence community’s safes cannot be accessed, the estimate here is a conservative one. The actual numbers are probably significantly higher.
During the Second Intifada Sources in the Shin Bet say that during the period of the Second Intifada, for each assassination operation that succeeded, there were five to seven earlier attempts at the same target that failed. Some of these were aborted before fire was opened, while some failed because the missile was diverted when civilians were spotted in the target zone, and others because the target was missed. During Operation Birds of Prey, which began the hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2008 by attempting to sow “shock and awe” in the Strip, there were more than a thousand bombing missions, some aimed at personnel and others at structures and storage facilities. Interviews with Ehud Barak, July 1, 2013, Yoav Galant, June 1, 2011, and “Amazonas,” June 2017.
By contrast, during the presid
ency of George W. Bush In an interview with the author (June 12, 2016), Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes, the authoritative history of the CIA, argued that no CIA-attempted assassinations against political leaders such as Fidel Castro of Cuba were successful. Furthermore, these attempts all came to a halt after the murder of John F. Kennedy. However, Weiner also said that the CIA continued afterward to be involved in providing intelligence and operational assistance to United States proxies throughout the world, and that many thousands of people were killed by these proxies as a result of the CIA’s direct and indirect support—some during torture, others during paramilitary activity in the shadow war the agency conducted until the end of the Cold War. The total number killed by U.S. proxies is very difficult to establish, but Weiner said that in the Vietnam War alone the number included more than twenty thousand suspected Vietcong. In the wake of various inquiry panels’ investigations into CIA activities, Presidents Ford and Carter issued directives barring the intelligence community from conducting any direct or indirect targeted killings. After 9/11, however, targeted killing operations resumed, primarily by means of drones in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The numbers cited in the text are taken from the D.C.-based think tank New America at https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/americas-counterterrorism-wars/pakistan/.
CHAPTER 1: IN BLOOD AND FIRE
Wilkin was the commander of the Jewish unit Interviews with David Shomron, May 26, 2011, and Yitzhak Shamir, January 1997.
Thanks to the intelligence they provided Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, 230 (Hebrew).
campaign of “personal terror” Interview with Yitzhak Shamir, January 1997.
Wilkin knew he was a target Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, 191 (Hebrew). Banai, Anonymous Soldiers, 243 (Hebrew). Fearing assassination, Morton was posted to the British colony of Trinidad, but Lehi tried to kill him there too. Yahav, His Blood Be on His Own Head: Murders and Executions During the Era of the Yishuv, 286 (Hebrew).
None of those details Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, 235.
“We were too busy and hungry” Interview with Shomron, May 26, 2011.
Wilkin left the officers’ lodgings Ben-Tor, The Lehi Lexicon, 119–20 (Hebrew).
“The only thing that hurt me” Interview with Shomron, May 26, 2011.
The roots of that strategy can be traced to eight men There is a lack of clarity as to the date of the historic meeting. Most Hebrew sources give it as September 29, whereas the sources in English say September 28. All the sources say it was on the eve of the festival of Simhat Torah in 1907, but that occurred on September 30.
Ben-Zvi and his seven comrades There is also disagreement over the number of participants. Most sources say eight, but some say ten. It may be that after the fact, there were those who wanted to be associated with what turned out to be a historic event.
Many were living in abject poverty Hagai, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi: Selected Documents, 15–16 (Hebrew).
Some were former members of Russian left-wing revolutionary movements Enlistment of Jews in the revolutionary movements was no longer a rarity by the mid-1870s. Vital, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe 1789–1939, 400–415.
They all were desperately poor Particularly ardent was Manya Shochat, a woman who joined the group shortly afterward and who had taken part in a number of terrorist actions in Russia and had hidden some of the underground’s weapons in her home in Odessa. After a student happened to inadvertently see the cache, Shochat didn’t hesitate. She drew a miniature pistol with a silencer and shot the unfortunate student dead. Then she and a friend cut the legs off the corpse so it would fit into a trunk, which they dispatched to a made-up address. Lazar, Six Singular Individuals, 52–53 (Hebrew).
Mounted on their horses Yahav, His Blood Be on His Own Head, 40 (Hebrew).
Hashomer did not recoil Yahav, His Blood Be on His Own Head, 33–39 (Hebrew).
Haganah in its early years was influenced It emerged later that Manya Shochat, one of Hashomer’s founders, who sent the assassins, had based her decision on flawed information. Dalia Karpel, “The Untold Story About the Wrong Arab, Who Got Assassinated by Manya Shochat,” Haaretz, June 5, 2009. Yahav, His Blood Be on His Own Head, 41 (Hebrew). Lazar, Six Singular Individuals, 78–93.
On June 30, 1924—just a day before Nakdimon, De-Han: The First Political Murder, 171–82 (Hebrew). Interview with Shlomo Nakdimon, February 18, 2015. Email from Nakdimon, May 29, 2017.
Ben-Gurion, however, took a dim view of such acts Israel Galili Testimony, Yad Tabenkin Archive (YTA), 5/7/1–2–15.
targeted killings against…Jews Like any underground resistance, the Zionist cells were constantly threatened with infiltration and exposure. Jewish informants, confirmed or merely suspected, were swiftly eliminated—26 by the Irgun and 29 by Lehi. Ben-Gurion himself approved the elimination of many Jewish informants by Haganah, making sure the killings would receive wide publicity in order to deter others. Gelber, A Budding Fleur-de-Lis: Israeli Intelligence Services During the War of Independence, 1948–1949, 553 (Hebrew). The figures are from research by the journalist Shlomo Nakdimon.
targeted killings would not be used as a weapon Ronen Bergman, “The Scorpion File,” Yedioth Ahronoth, March 30, 2007.
“The Jewish people had been humiliated, trampled, murdered” Interview with Mordecai Gichon, May 7, 2010.
tried to draw out of them details The reports sent by the Brigade personnel, including Gichon, to the Haganah and Yishuv leadership in Palestine were the first information about the scale of the destruction of Europe’s Jews, first from Italy and Austria, and in October 1945 also from Poland and the death camps themselves. The Jewish Brigade, Mission to Locate Relatives of Soldiers, Mission Diary, Pinhas Loebling, October 1956, in the collection of the Jewish Legion Museum, Museums Unit of the Ministry of Defense.
“We thought we could not rest” Interview with Hanoch Bartov, June 6, 2010.
“Revenge now is an act of no national value” Even the heads of the far-left Hashomer Hatzair movement were aware of the vengeance operations and gave their silent consent. Halamish, Meir Yaari, 283 (Hebrew).
they sanctioned some types of reprisals against the Nazis Another vengeance initiative was launched by a group of Jews who had fought the Germans as partisans, under the command of Abba Kovner. They wanted to kill six million Germans by poisoning reservoirs. Later they changed their plan and tried to kill German POWs by poisoning their bread. Scientists in the Yishuv supplied them with arsenic, but to this day it is not known what the leaders in Palestine knew of this plan. The Partisans claim they managed to kill hundreds of Germans, but the American military who were in charge of the camp say only a few dozen went down with severe stomach poisoning. Interview with Dina Porat, October 2014. Porat, Beyond the Corporeal: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner, 224–48. Bar-Zohar, The Avengers, 40–47 (Hebrew).
“revenge, but not a robber’s revenge” Testimony of Kalman Kit, Haganah Historical Archives, 48.42.
“We looked for big fish” Interview with Gichon, May 7, 2010.
Coercion worked Testimony of Dov Gur, HHA, 12.36. Gelber, Jewish Palestinian Volunteering in the British Army, 307–308 (Hebrew).
stark choice: cooperate or die Testimonies in the series The Avengers, directed by Yarin Kimor and broadcast on Israel’s Channel 1 TV in 2015. Transcript of testimonies in author’s archive, courtesy of Yarin Kimor.
“The goy broke and said he was willing to cooperate” Testimony of Yisrael Karmi, HHA, 51.4.
“No one suspected me” Interview with Gichon, May 7, 2010. Diary of the intelligence officer of the Brigade’s First Battalion (author’s archive, received from Gichon).
teams of no more than five men In order to conceal their nighttime activities, the group of avengers, who during the daytime acted as regular soldiers in the British army, used the cover of
an imaginary unit, the TTG Company, a name they used on the papers they presented to sentries at roadblocks on their way to carrying out their operations (as well as smuggling arms and Holocaust survivors). The letters TTG, which the British sentries may have thought was a top secret unit, so secret nobody had heard of it, actually stood for tilhas tizi gesheftn, a combination of Yiddish and Arabic meaning “lick-my-ass business.” Eldar, Soldiers of the Shadows, 12, 17 (Hebrew).
“In most cases we brought the Nazis to a small line” Shalom Giladi testimony, HAA, 150.004.
The operation lasted only Bar-Zohar, Avengers, 37 (Hebrew).
the methods used to identify targets were insufficient Interview with Yoav Gelber, May 16, 2011. Naor, Laskov, 141–43 (Hebrew). Gmul veterans admit to only one mistake: In June 1945 they were certain they’d located and disposed of Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of shipping millions of Jews to their death. Only years after the killing, when Israel received information that he was alive, did they realize they were wrong.
Gmul was closed down Gelber, Growing a Fleur-de-Lis, 457–60 (Hebrew).
The leader of the Templers in Palestine Mann, Sarona: Years of Struggle, 1939–1948, 111–13 (Hebrew).
“I asked them if they knew there was a hell on earth” David Giladi, “With the Son of Wagner from Sarona, and with the Guest from the Monastery in Budapest,” Yedioth Ahronoth, March 29, 1946. “The ‘Palestinians’ Were Supervising the Extermination,” Yedioth Ahronoth, March 31, 1946.
“Here come exultant Germans” Interview with Rafi Eitan, January 24, 2013.
the Haganah’s “special company” “German Shot Dead,” Palestine Post, March 24, 1946. Mann, Sarona, 111–38 (Hebrew).
Yitzhak Sadeh, realized that this was not a regular military operation Yahav, His Blood Be on His Own Head, 96 (Hebrew).
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