Rise and Kill First

What is this book about?

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and documents, the Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman reconstructs more than seven decades of targeted killings and assassinations carried out by Israel's intelligence services. The book runs from the security dilemmas of Israel's founding years to the recent confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme, and tries to explain a single logic: faced with threats it regards as existential, why does Israel choose to strike first? It is at once an intelligence history and a moral reckoning with state violence.

Why read it?

It is an enormously detailed piece of investigative reporting and a key to the region: Israel's intelligence logic and the deeper drivers of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Iranian conflicts are all traceable here. Bergman obtained rare access, and the narrative is gripping. Note, though, that the book is written from within Israel's security perspective; the legality of targeted killing, the harm to civilians, and the limits of what intelligence agencies may do are all fiercely contested internationally.

Core Ideas

• Israel's underlying logic toward existential threats is to strike first: if someone means to kill you, kill him first.
• Targeted killing is treated in Israel as a long-term instrument of national security, not an occasional extreme act.
• The capacity of an intelligence agency and a nation's existential anxiety shape each other into a self-perpetuating pattern of action.
• This logic remains deeply contested in both morality and law, and cannot be settled with the single word "effective".

What questions does this book try to answer?

• Facing the Iranian nuclear threat, why does Israel keep escalating, step by step?
• How did Israel build such an effective and aggressive intelligence apparatus?
• Where lie the costs and the limits of trading "striking first" for security?

Who should read it?

For readers interested in international politics, the Middle East, and the history of intelligence. The book is dense with names, operation codes, and timelines; reading it with a map and a chronology helps, and it is worth keeping the author's Israeli vantage point in mind.

How to Read It

The author lays bare the ruthless logic of Mossad's "strike first", and offers historical clues for understanding today's Middle East. But read it clear-eyed: this is a book by an Israeli journalist, drawing mainly on Israeli sources. It shows the logic of the operations, not necessarily their full cost. Reading Palestinian or third-party accounts alongside it is the only way to form a fuller judgement on the controversy over targeted killing.