Book Review: Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman

Articulating how a nation state exercises its sovereignty and balances the application of deadly force against a terrorist threat that is presenting a clear and present danger can take up volumes.? Add to this, a targeted effort to identify its self-defense and proactive actions, as oppressing the terrorist group which attacked it, makes for an even greater challenge.? However, Ronen Bergman in his book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations is able to do so in a manner that makes clear the victories, failures and effort put into the operation of Israel’s targeted assassination program.? ?

Bergman’s work is based not only on in-depth research but on interviews of former intelligence agents (Mossad and Shin Bet), interviews with Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert - former Israeli Prime Ministers and an interview with Meir Dagan a recent head of Mossad.

While the book primarily deals with targeted killings by the branches of the Israeli government in both peacetime and wartime it bridges activities from its pre-state era and by the organizations that would later become the army and intelligence services of Israel.

To the casual student of government affairs and to the anti-Israeli opposition groups these acts may appear as a callous disregard for life and cruel and brutal behavior.? However, Bergman is able to craftily take the reader from pre-nation actions to its current state (note, the book was published in 2018 and before the current state of affairs) and detail the calculated discourse and not just actions that have evolved.? War time Targeted Preventive Acts as well as peace time acts are discussed in depth as is the evolution of the Targeted Assassination Program.?The distinction between acts during war and peace being key to the evolution and justification for this type of program.

The inevitable, violent, and sometimes irreconcilable clash between a nation’s need to defend itself and the fundamental principles of democracy and morality

Gabriella Blum and Phillip Heymann in their 2010 article Law and Policy of Targeted Killing for the Harvard Law School National Security Journal discuss and contrast the targeted killing programs of both the United States and Israel.? These programs are viewed from the Law Enforcement (Peace Time Operations) and War paradigms (Parks memorandum and UN Charter Article 51).? Both of which do not provide a clear solution and Blum and Heymann recognizing that the limits set by the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court opinion on the Israeli program are as a good place to start.?

Bergman details how Israel has wrestled with many of the challenges of maintaining a targeted program and with the questions raised by Blum, Heymann, Parks, the UN, the Council of Foreign Relations, and others. More clearly, the morality of the program, proportionality, and the delicate balance between a person’s right to life and the duty of the sovereign to protect its citizens.?

As an example, Bergman documents how in 2001, Israel took an in-depth look at this complex matter and produced a legal opinion on the topic of “Striking at Persons Involved Directly in Attacks against Israelis.” Opening with the statement “we have for the first time set out to analyze the question of the legality of the initiated interdiction . . . such actions are carried out in order to save the lives of Israeli civilians and members of the security forces.? This is, therefore, in principle, an activity that leans on the moral basis of the rules concerning self-defense, a case of ‘He who comes to kill you, rise up early and kill him first.’”

Bergman best describes this challenge as the inevitable, violent, and sometimes irreconcilable clash between a nation’s need to defend itself and the fundamental principles of democracy and morality. ?

Here, I find Bergman's thesis to be the attempt to balance Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges (Cicero) with the proactive and necessary need to rise and strike before being killed; the thin line between the sovereign's duty to protect and balance the person's right to life with that of the citizens of the state.

About the author: Lawrence Lujan is a Commander with 34 years of service and is also a graduate of the?FBI National Academy - session 274 and the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas (LEMIT) Class 58. His operational and instructional experience is focused on individual and special team tactics (leadership, officer safety, patrol field tactics, active shooter response, mobile field force, firearms, gang enforcement and SWAT). He has taught internationally in South Korea, El Salvador, and Canada with operational experience in Honduras, Canada, Panama and Colombia. Lawrence brings a unique and sought-after skill set to the law enforcement arena.