The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism

Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare

by Ami Pedahzur

While Mossad is known as one of the world's most successful terrorist-fighting organizations, the state of Israel has, more than once and on many levels, risked the lives of its agents and soldiers through unwise intelligence-based intervention. The elimination of Palestinian leaders and militants has not decreased the incidence of Palestinian terrorism, for example. In fact, these incidents have become more lethal than ever, and ample evidence suggests that the actions of Israeli intelligence have fueled terrorist activities across the globe.

An expert on terror and political extremism, Ami Pedahzur argues that Israel's strict reliance on the elite units of the intelligence community is fundamentally flawed. A unique synthesis of memoir, academic research, and information gathered from print and online sources, Pedahzur's complex study explores this issue through Israel's past encounters with terrorists, specifically hostage rescue missions, the first and second wars in Lebanon, the challenges of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian terrorist groups, and Hezbollah. He brings a rare transparency to Israel's counterterrorist activities, highlighting their successes and failures and the factors that have contributed to these results. From the foundations of this analysis, Pedahzur ultimately builds a strategy for future confrontation that will be relevant not only to Israel but also to other countries that have adopted Israel's intelligence-based model.

Genres: Espionage, History, Terrorism

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2009

Reviews

[Arthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

A theoretical framework is presented for counterterrorism: the war model, the criminal-justice model, and the reconciliatory model. It is argued that Israel has too often chosen the war model and that this has not been particularly effective. A combination of the defensive model (some of this is already applied, e.g. the defense of airports, the use of air marshals) and particularly the reconciliatory model holds more promise according to the author. He also argues that Israel has misused many of its elite troops for counterterrorism rather than the purposes they were created for (e.g. Sayaret Matkal was a reconnaissance unit and specialised in the positioning of eavesdropping devices and their battery replacement). This has cost the lives of elite soldiers and suboptimal outcomes. While Yamam was explicitly created for dealing with hostage rescue they often lost out against these elite IDF units as rescues are high profile and, if successful, attract publicity and further resources. And many decision makes have a background in these elite units. The argumentation strikes me as very interesting and worthwhile. As a small matter, after reading two books about the Entebbe rescue, I had some doubts about the full accuracy of the description of this event.