I haven’t had much time over the last few years to just read books I would like to. I tended to read more books I need to read. But as I’ve been shifting into another gear in life, waiting to see where God leads me, I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf. Yeah, it was a little tiny joke, new leaf? Get it leaf? Book page? Oh, forget it, if I have to explain it, it wasn’t that good. So a friend of mine who is blogging from Israel right now told me about this book she had purchased and thought I might like it as well. I do, and did. Yes, I finished it.

Considering what all is going on in the world right now, it’s interesting reading. It would be at any time I think, the world is so much less stable now due to an inept President, or perhaps he is just bent on bringing the United States to it’s knees. He uses the intelligence resources of America to spy on it’s own citizens. The Israeli’s tend to use theirs to fight the foes that want to destroy their country and the West. Although I wouldn’t swear Bibi hasn’t reconsidered that of late.

I have a Tee-shirt that says “Don’t Worry America, Israel has your back”. It seems it really has.

The book is “The Mossad” by  Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal. Available at Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/laggvbj

The Mossad

The Mossad

I’ll just give you a little bit of the opening. I’m sure you knew this from the main stream media (yeah, I crack myself up too).

On November 12, 2011, a tremendous explosion destroyed a secret missile base close to Tehran, killing seventeen Revolutionary Guards and reducing dozens of missiles to a heap of charred iron. General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the “father” of the Shehab long-range missiles, and the man in charge of Iran’s missile program, was killed in the explosion. But the secret target of the bombing was not Moghaddam. It was a solid-fuel rocket engine, able to carry a nuclear missile more than six thousand miles across the globe, from Iran’s underground silos to the U.S. mainland.
The new missile planned by Iran’s leaders was to bring America’s major cities to their knees and transform Iran into a dominant world power. The November explosion delayed the project by several months.
Even though the target of the new long-range missile was America, the explosions that destroyed the Iranian base were probably set by the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad. Since its inception more than sixty years ago, the Mossad has served fearlessly and secretly against the dangers threatening Israel and the West. And more so than ever before, the Mossad’s intelligence gathering and operations affect American security abroad and at home.

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The unnamed warriors of the Mossad are its lifeblood, men and women who risk their lives, live away from their families under assumed identities, carry out daring operations in enemy countries where the slightest mistake can bring their arrest, torture, or death. During the Cold War, the worst fate for a secret agent captured in the West or the Communist bloc was to be exchanged for another agent on some cold, foggy bridge in Berlin. Russian or American, British or East German, the agent always knew he was not alone, there was always someone who would bring him back from the cold. But for the lonely warriors of the Mossad, there are no exchanges and foggy bridges; they pay with their lives for their audacity.

In this book, we bring to light the greatest missions and the most courageous heroes of the Mossad, as well as the mistakes and failures that more than once tarnished the agency’s image and shook its very foundations. These missions shaped Israel’s fate and, in many ways, the fate of the world. And yet, for the Mossad agents, what they all share is a deep, idealistic love of their country, a total devotion to its existence and survival, a readiness to assume the most dramatic risks and face the ultimate dangers. For the sake of Israel.

This was a fascinating book. The authors don’t claim that the Mossad always gets it right. They give some examples of missions that have gone horribly awry. But they get a lot more right than they get wrong. Some well know missions such as Operation Thunderbolt in which Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu (older brother of Bibi) was killed are detailed, as well as many others that had remained unknown. It’s a hard book to put down! If you read it, let me know what you think.

The Mossad Are Everywhere

The Mossad Are Everywhere