A new book chronicles these techniques and asserts that Israel has carried out at least 2,700 assassination operations in its 70 years of existence.
Based on 1,000 interviews and thousands of documents, and running more than 600 pages, Rise and Kill First makes the case that Israel has used assassination in the place of war, killing half a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists, for instance, rather than launching a military attack.
In the 1970s, a new head of operations for Mossad opened hundreds of commercial companies overseas with the idea that they might be useful one day.
After a Palestinian armed group killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel sent agents to kill the perpetrators – and shot more than one misidentified man. There were also successful operations that did more harm than good to Israel's policy goals, Bergman notes.
One of Bergman's most important sources was Meir Dagan, a recent head of Mossad for eight years who died in early 2016 .
...