Le livre d’un journaliste israélien révèle l’ampleur de la politique des assassinats ciblés perpétrés par les services secrets du régime de Tel-Aviv.

La presse anglo-saxonne est moins « discrète », ou plus courageuse que la presse française. Qui s’en étonnera ? C’est en effet dans le grand quotidien britannique «The Independant (on line 28 01 2018) que l’on peut lire un article d’Ethan Bronner portant sur un livre écrit par un journaliste du Yédiot Aharonot, et qui a pour titre Rise and kill first.

Voici quelques extraits de cet article intitulé : « dentifrice empoisonné et téléphones qui explosent : le nouveau registre des 2700 chroniques relatant les opérations d’assassinats effectuées par Israël » :

« Le journaliste d’investigation Ronen Bergman a persuadé des agents du Mossad, du Shin Beth et de l’armée à raconter leurs scénarios des crimes d’État.

Dentifrice empoisonné qui provoque la mort au bout d’un mois, drones armés, téléphones mobiles qui explosent, pneus de rechange avec bombe commandée à distance. (…) Un nouveau livre fait la chronique de ces techniques et affirme qu’Israël a réalisé au moins 2700 opérations d’assassinats en 70 ans d’existence.

Le résultat c’est la première approche complète concernant les crimes d’État israéliens. Basé sur 1000 interviews et des milliers de documents, sur plus de 600 pages, Rise and kill  démontre qu’Israël a pratiqué l’assassinat comme forme de guerre, tuant, par exemple, une demi douzaine de scientifiques nucléaires iraniens. (…) Il suggère aussi fortement qu’Israël a utilisé un empoisonnement par rayonnement afin de tuer Yasser Arafat ».

Remarque : le titre du livre – quelque chose comme : lève-toi et tue en premier – serait une référence à un commandement de l’ancien Talmud juif selon lequel si quelqu’un vient pour te tuer… alors, lève-toi et tue le en premier. Ce titre serait donc une formule allusive visant à légitimer les assassinats ciblés israéliens.

Il en faudra bien davantage pour nous convaincre qu’ un ancien texte religieux pourrait à lui seul, si peu que ce soit, justifier… l’injustifiable. Cet injustifiable commis depuis 70 années dans la mise en œuvre d’une politique d’occupation, de colonisation et d’agressions, totalement contraire au droit international, condamnée par l’ensemble des résolutions pertinentes de l’ONU et foulant aux pieds les pratiques internationales et les normes éthiques les plus communément admises.

Le Washington Post, autre grand quotidien (des États-Unis celui-ci) n’emploie pas de circonvolutions inutiles. Sur ce même sujet il titre : « comment les services secrets israéliens on bâti la machine à tuer la plus robuste de l’histoire ».

Décidément, la presse anglo-saxonne… Questions : quel journal français osera donner un compte rendu de cet ouvrage ? Quelle maison d’édition osera en proposer une traduction ?

Rise and kill first, secret history of Israël’s targeted assassinations, Ronen Bergman, Random House, Janvier 2018.

Voici l’article intégral du quotidien The Independant :

Poisoned toothpaste and exploding phones: New book chronicles Israel’s ‘2,700’ assassination operations

Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target’s life. Armed drones. Exploding mobile phones. Spare tyres with remote-control bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of Muslim clerics.

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. While many failed, they add up to far more than any other western country, the book says.

Ronen Bergman, the intelligence correspondent for Yediot Aharonot newspaper, persuaded many agents of Mossad, Shin Bet and the military to tell their stories, some using their real names. The result is the first comprehensive look at Israel’s use of state-sponsored killings.

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. It also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the long-time Palestinian leader an act its officials have consistently denied.

Mr Bergman writes that Mr Arafat’s death in 2004 fit a pattern and had advocates. But he steps back from flatly asserting what happened, saying that Israeli military censorship prevents him from revealing what – or if – he knows.

The book’s title comes from the ancient Jewish Talmud admonition, « If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first. » Mr Bergman says a huge percentage of the people he interviewed cited that passage as justification for their work. So does an opinion by the military’s lawyer declaring such operations to be legitimate acts of war.

Despite the many interviews, including with former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Mr Bergman, the author of several books, says the Israeli secret services sought to interfere with his work, holding a meeting in 2010 on how to disrupt his research and warning former Mossad employees not to speak with him.

He says that while the US has tighter constraints on its agents than does Israel, President George W Bush adopted many Israeli techniques after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and President Barack Obama launched several hundred targeted killings.

« The command-and-control systems, the war rooms, the methods of information gathering and the technology of the pilotless aircraft or drones, that now serve the Americans and their allies were all in large part developed in Israel, » Mr Bergman writes.

The book gives a textured history of the personalities and tactics of the various secret services. 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. For example, Mossad created a Middle Eastern shipping business that, years later, came in handy in providing cover for a team in the waters off Yemen.

There have been plenty of failures. After a Palestinian terrorist group killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel sent its 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, Mr Bergman notes.

Mr Bergman raises moral and legal concerns provoked by state-sponsored killing, including the existence of separate legal systems for secret agents and the rest of Israel. But he presents the operations, for the most part, as achieving their aims. While many credit the barrier Israel built along and inside the West Bank with stopping assaults on Israeli citizens in the early 2000s, he argues that what made the difference was « a massive number of targeted killings of terrorist operatives. »

One of Bergman’s most important sources was Meir Dagan, a recent head of Mossad for eight years who died in early 2016. Toward the end of his career, Mr Dagan fell out with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu partly over launching a military attack on Iran. Mr Netanyahu said intelligence techniques such as selling the country faulty parts for its reactors – which Israel and the US were doing – weren’t enough.

Mr Dagan argued back that these techniques, especially assassinations, would do the job. As Bergman quotes him saying, « In a car, there are 25,000 parts on average. Imagine if 100 of them are missing. It would be very hard to make it go. On the other hand, sometimes it’s most effective to kill the driver, and that’s that. »