The reasons for this preponderance of targeted assassination are multiple. xxi), has become the go-to solution for all kinds of political and military problems, often in place of other, less violent (or perhaps more effective) solutions. ‘Killing the driver’, as former commando leader and Mossad director Meir Dagan put it (Bergman, 2018, p. The overall impression from Bergman’s account is that Israeli counter-insurgency has largely been stuck on a path dependency of violent repression since the very beginnings of the state of Israel. In this book, Bergman traces the use of targeted assassination by the Israeli Defence Forces and by intelligence agencies, noting broad shifts in doctrines, the means and restraints on the use of assassination, and strategic imperatives. To some measure, the result of a disadvantageous military situation, diplomatic isolation, the Holocaust trauma and path dependency, Bergman argues that targeted killing often became the default option for the resolution of diplomatic, political and military crises. Accordingly, this book demonstrates the central – and constant – presence of targeted assassination in Israeli policy since the beginning of the twentieth century, before even the foundation of the state of Israel. As Bergman notes, ‘Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world’ (Bergman, 2018, p. This long-standing pattern of targeted assassinations is the focus of Ronen Bergman – a correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth and for The New York Times, author of the article quoted above – in his monumental book Rise and kill first. But the Mossad has a long history of assassinating scientists developing weaponry seen as a threat’ (Halbfinger and Bergman, 2018). Yet, as Halbfinger and Bergman note, this car bomb followed a suspicious pattern: ‘Israel did not claim responsibility. Syrian sources were quick to blame Israeli agents for the car bomb which killed the scientist, accusations which Israel was quick to dismiss.
On 6 August 2018, an article by David Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman appeared in the New York Times, repor ting on the death of a Syrian scientist working on a missile program (Halbfinger and Bergman, 2018).
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