The Way of the Mossad

Spies Against Armageddon by Dan Raviv
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Going back to the pre-state days of the Hagganah the Jews of Israel have had an intelligence agency. After Israel became a state the intelligence branch of the Hagganah morphed into what is today three ore four agencies. The most infamous is the famed Mossad which spies on other countries. The Shin Bet is Israel’s version of the FBI. They spy on internal domestic enemies. There are two others. The first is Aman and they spy on foreign militaries , gathering secrets about the milititary and sometimes stealing weapon secrets . Lakam spies on the technological details of other countries and try to get it for Israel.

During Israel’s early years the state was run by the Labor or Israeli left. They did not trust the right wingers very much. That would change over the years with Yitzhak Shamir becoming head of the Mossad. The intelligence agencies often gained information by compromising or making an agent out of someone working for the enemy. They would either pay them or coerce them. The Mossad and other spy agencies have made their share of mistakes. Such mistakes would include getting caught spying on an ally or getting your agents caught using the passports of other nations. Those nations did not like that too much. Israel bungled an assassination attempt of aa Hamas operative in Jordan and this caused a real flap between the two nations.

The book recounts all the intelligence agencies operations from the states beginning all the way to the present. This includes some pretty major screw ups and some major victories. If you have followed up on Israel’s history then most of this will not be new to you. There are a few tidbits in the book that even surprised me. Perhaps that is what makes the book worth reading.

In the end you realize that whether you think Israel is good or bad we are all just humans willing too do nasty stuff in order to survive. If you are not up to date on Mossad history then I recommend this book.

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