Rise and kill first

In Rise and Kill First , Ronen Bergman traces the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel's campaign of targeted killings, which shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and much of the world.

The Talmud says, “If anyone comes to kill you, stand up and kill him first.” This instinct to make even the most aggressive decisions to defend the Jewish people is embedded in Israel’s DNA. Since the state’s founding in 1948, protecting the nation has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and its armed forces. In their vast arsenal, there is one weapon they have relied on to ward off the most serious threats: targeted killings have been used countless times, against enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In *Stand Up and Kill First* , journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman offers a compelling account of targeted killing programs—their successes, their failures, and the moral and political toll taken on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions.

Bergman secured exceptionally rare cooperation from many former and current members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu. He also collaborated with high-level figures from the country's military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world's most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a "Mossad within the Mossad" that carries out attacks against the most valuable targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign in history to combat what once seemed uncontrollable: suicide terrorism).

In Rise and Kill First , a gripping and revealing book, the author traces, from the beginning of the State to the present, the sweeping events and ethical questions underlying the campaign of targeted killings that shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and much of the world.

Including never-before-seen behind-the-scenes accounts of key operations and based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman gained exclusive access during his decades of journalism, Rise and Kill First takes us to the heart of Israel's most secretive activities.