Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team [Paperback]

I really enjoyed this book. It was well paced throughout. After reading quite a few "non-fiction" spy books, to me Vengeance has the ring of truth to it, reminding me more of the Falcon and the Snowman than Vise's The Bureau and the Mole.

I had the luxury of reading Vengeance when it first came out, and reread it after viewing the movie Munich, of which this book was the primary source.

Our "hero" Anver, was a Mossad agent who was asked to leave the agency by Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel, to lead a team of men. This team was to attempt to take the lives of 11 men who were responsible for the Black September terrorist group's act of killing Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

The book follows the freelance team during their strong, early times, and their weak moments, both personal and professional. We meet not only the team, but also their sources, who are also personalized.

Although the author had to rely on a single source for some sections of the book, he is honest about this. When there are questions about his interpretation, he explains the different theories in the footnotes.

I bumped my review from 4 stars to 5 because of the "Notes on a Controversy" and footnotes that follow the main text in this volume. Questions raised about the author's perspective and sources are answered well in these two sections. I found Jonas to be honest about relying on his source. He also debates articles that attacked his book with his perspective without name calling.

This is one of those books that leaves you wondering, on several levels, about its contents. I don't think this is bad: actually, since it gets you thinking about the issues involved, I think it's a good thing. Vengeance purports to recount the efforts of a group of Israelis sent by the Mossad to Europe to kill various PLO figures who had aided, supported, planned, or otherwise enabled the 1972 Munich massacre of the Israeli Olympic team. The whole book apparently, at the time, raised a considerable controversy: many of the events in the story are uncorroborated, and of course this would lead to some readers being skeptical.

On the other hand, this book represents the sort of thing you'd expect would happen. We know the Israelis at least tried such operations: the killing of a Morrocan waiter in Lillehammer Norway was certainly an attempt to kill one of the PLO's top guys, and some of the supporting Mossad operatives were caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to jail for their part in the plot. The whole thing sounds believable, down to the team having specialists for various aspects of operations in Europe, to their using small pistols because of the lack of loud noise (.22s with reduced powder for even less noise), the bombs that don't work exactly as planned, and the lack of exact information as to who was behind the retaliation once it began.

This book reads as a spy novel, and perhaps should be read at least partially as if it is one. After all, does anyone think that the writings of John Le Carre are completely fictional. He was, for a short time anyway, in the intelligence community, as were Graham Greene and Frederick Forsyth. You have to think that those authors include things from their own experience, and from the experiences of acquaintances, in their writings. This book, in an odd way, is similar. The author apparently writes the story with (as far as he knows) all of the main action recounted accurately, but he revised personal characteristics in order to conceal identities. As a result, the book is a history with novelistic elements, as opposed to a novel with historical elements.

I found the main premise of the book to be believable, however. While there's some doubt that Israel killed off as many people as this book says they did, in the fashion recounted here, the whole thing sounds plausible to me. The idea that they would have initial success and ultimately unravel is completely believable, and the premise that there were other teams, who eventually assasinated other PLO functionaries, is completely believeable. The anecdotes involving the main character negotiating with his bosses in a somewhat adversarial relationship sounds very convincing, while at the same time not being exactly what you'd expect in a professional intelligence agency. While unconfirmed, the whole story sounds credible, and that may be the best argument that it happened: at this point corroboration seems less likely, though I suppose that the Israelis could have a change of heart and come out and admit that what is recounted in the book actually happened. The end of the book makes it clear this is unlikely, though.

All in all, a good book, interesting, intelligently written, and confronting one of the great dillemmas of our time: what do you do when terrorists target innocent civilians and kill them? The author quotes Ghandhi as saying that an eye for an eye leads to a world of blind people. One might respond that no eye for an eye leads to a world of righteous blind people, and sighted victimizers. Very very interesting book.

Glad it's being re-printed. I read the hard-cover original book about 7-8 months ago, and it was an enthralling, yet disturbing and ultimately very sad story -- a book I didn't want to put down. Being re-released due to Spielberg's movie "Munich" - try to read the book first.

While presenting the intrigue and excitement of a good espionage thriller, it simultaneously chronicles the growing personal and ethical conflicts of the young Israeli Mossad agent chosen to lead a Kidon squad sent to hunt down and assassinate the Black September terrorist masterminds behind the 1972 Munich Olympics murders of 11 Israeli athletes.

In hindsight, and by comparison with other,later semi-official accounts, there are some careful but obvious fabrications to protect the way Mossad actually operated in Europe - but the bulk of the story appears to be pretty accurate, and you will easily recognize the real episodes that emerged in fictionalized form in novels by Daniel Silva, Steven Hartov, and others.

There is an abstractness and detached matter-of-factness about "Vengeance" that I suspect reflects the lead character's subsequent emotional dissociation - but that aloof coolness permeates the whole enterprise. The assassin 'officially' can not be an agent of Israel or Mossad and thus is immediately isolated from his support system and from any idealistic moral compass that persuaded him to take the job. We watch his dawning cynicism, grief, and guilt - but not remorse - as he realizes how equally expendable he is to his handlers, and in the end, he and his team are as hunted as their targets had been.

The book sticks with you afterwards -- I have found myself wondering how the lead character in this story has fared over the years - I hope he found some degree of safety and peace.

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