Vengeance by George Jonas

Reading this book was partially necessary because Peter lent it to me, and partially because my dad is a nutso Zionist, and I disagree with him on that political stance.

If you haven't googled it already, this is a probably true story of an Israeli counter-terrorist agent who worked in Europe for several years during the 1970's. At the time, counter-terrorism was just becoming a recognized military discipline. The protagonist and his team are given a list of eleven men to kill. The targets were allegedly responsible for planning or carrying out the murder of Israeli athletes during the 1970 Olympics.

This book was compiled as a memoir of one of the agents and has been independently verified in several ways, although obviously not every detail is verifiable.

Since its publication in 1984, very little seems to have changed in the way the Arab-Israeli conflict is fought, and the public knows just as little (or wrongly thinks they know as much) as they did in the 70's.

What I thought was most engaging about this book was its very conversational and unembellished style. It was like someone telling me a story in a bar and it was a heck of a story. It was kind of a Bourne Trilogy thing, but with a protagonist who could have been named Steve Martin, he's so average.

So where does the Zionist thing come in? The author and the protagonist question at several points during the book whether counter-terrorism tactics employed then (and now) by the Israeli government are actually effective at stopping or even decreasing terror. They seem to doubt whether the method of sending a group of hitmen after the hitmen who are chasing hitmen is really anything but vengeance.

My dad seems to think that Israel is justified in doing whatever it takes to protect itself from the forces which would try to destroy it. This seems okay, but not ideal, in theory. Self-preservation is not the highest of moral standings we can take, but when it applies to an entire nation it is logical. The question then is where the line is drawn between self- preservation and continued provocation of a long-standing grudge. So maybe there is justice in hunting down a single human who coordinated and funded an attack killing a dozen civilians. Maybe there is justice in taking out someone whose functional political stance is to destroy Israel and all its inhabitants. The wall I seem to be running into with the modern issue comes down to this: if we're saying it's an eye for an eye, then why, in the most recent events, has the casualty count been Palestine: 213 and Israel: 1? You don't get to claim self-defense on odds like that. Yes, one side has made the first move, but I feel that the proportions of this conflict can not be reconciled with a claim of self-preservation. Every human death is a tragedy, and using civilians as retaliatory targets, whether in response to provocation or not, is neither politically nor morally acceptable.

There's my little political rant. I'm not going to sit here and preach at you about a subject that I have no real-world experience of. I simply would like everyone to take note that this book, thrilling adventure though it is, has a very valid point to make about how terrorism is handled in the global political theatre.

Up next: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. I'm really excited for this one, because I've never read Shaw before and he's a big deal, apparently.