Stunning Investigation Exposes Israel’s Secretive Assassination Program
By Ronen Bergman
Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Ronen Bergman from writing “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” a stunning book exposing the details of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program. Israel even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent Bergman from gaining access to historical documents. Despite this, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, scouring thousands of documents and meeting with some 1,000 sources. The result is a stunning investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. We speak with Ronen Bergman about Israel’s many attempts to kill the former chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and the possibility that they succeeded.
TRANSCRIPT
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re continuing our discussion with Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, author of a stunning book on the long, secretive history of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. It’s a book that Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Bergman from writing. They even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent him from gaining access to historical documents. Despite their efforts, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, meeting with a thousand sources, from Israel political leaders and Mossad heads to the assassins themselves. He also obtained thousands of classified documents illuminating the shadowy corners of Israeli spy agencies.
AMY GOODMAN: The result is an exhaustive, illuminating investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. It looks at the way Israel’s assassination program has influenced America’s post-9/11 foreign policy under Bush as well as President Obama.
Ronen Bergman writes on the book’s prologue, “Nowadays, when the same kind of extrajudicial killing that Israel has used for decades is being used daily by America against its enemies, it is appropriate … to study the high moral price that has been paid, for the use of such power.”
Ronen Bergman, we thank you for staying with us. Again, we’re getting a number of hits on this Tel Aviv satellite, so we’re going to try to stick with you as long as we can hear you. But in the note on your sources at the beginning of your book, you talk about how difficult it was to get access. You say a petition to the Supreme Court for an order forcing compliance with the law, that was to get you information, was dragged out over years with the complicity of the court, ended with nothing but an amendment to the law itself. The secrecy provisions were extended from 50 to 70 years—longer than the history of the state. Many in Shin Bet and Mossad were warned not to speak to you. How did you get access to this information, and what did you find?
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