An enemy state is secretly promoting a project of a weapons program for mass destruction.
The State of Israel learns about this almost by accident, and embarks on a complex, unprecedented operation to eliminate the scientist who is leading the project - a cruel opponent who has been considered dead for many years.
Leading the operation are the institution, its employees and also one of its retirees, Ehud, who was returned for exactly this purpose - to run Project Z. The team he heads turns worlds to reach a scientist, and eventually comes up with an idea that was never carried out, seemingly unthinkable: To be assisted by a fighter who is terminally ill for an operation from which there is no way back. This idea - which turns out to be the only way to thwart the project - is thought-provoking but also turns the stomach, into characters in the book but also into the reader. "We have never done anything like this," says the head of the Mossad.
Across 243 pages, "Very Useful Death" sweeps the reader into a human and operational drama, the purpose of which is to save the State of Israel.
He goes through the intricate operational dilemmas that accompany the shadow world of espionage and the institution, for the magic and dangers that come with it together.
But Yiftach Reicher-Atir's new book, Alumni and Commanders of the Special Operations World, also reveals the personal difficulties, loves, disappointments and especially the human dilemmas that accompany those who chose to enlist in this profession, which is familiar to most of us only from watching movies. Really surpasses all imagination.
"Ethos of saving lives"
Reicher-Atir, 72. Married and father of four, and grandfather of six.
Born in Kibbutz Shoval and currently living in Tel Aviv.
He enlisted in the paratroopers and commanded the patrol.
He later served and commanded classified units of the Intelligence Corps (including a period as Yoni Netanyahu's deputy in the General Staff Reconnaissance Squadron), and for six years was commander of the IDF Special Operations Division, during which Abu Jihad was assassinated in Tunis and Sheikh Obeid was abducted in Lebanon.
In his last position in the IDF he was an attaché in Japan and South Korea, and then moved to the business sector.
Sheikh Obeid, in 2004, Photo: IDF Spokesman
"A Very Useful Death" (Azure Publishing) is his fifth book. For a reader unfamiliar with the twists and turns of the spy world, this is an excellent thriller that is easily read. But those who know this world cannot escape thoughts, comparisons, plans. The characters and plot may be fictional, but their background is completely authentic. It is not for nothing that a note was added on the back of the book, in bold letters, according to which "the book was approved by the censorship and the Ministerial Committee for Permission to Publish, after lengthy litigation with them."
Is there a chance that the dilemma at the heart of the book, through the elimination of the scientist, would also have happened in reality? That a warrior would really volunteer to go on a mission that he has no chance of returning from?
"I spoke to quite a few warriors and commanders in the process of writing the book. All the warriors answered me with one word: 'Sure.' All the commanders told me that they would not approve such an operation. "Because we have an ethos of saving lives, not of sacrificing lives. I too would volunteer as a warrior, but not as a commander. Or as Ehud says in the book - 'sometimes I'm in favor of doing things I am against."
He deliberately leaves the enemy's plot a little abstract.
Both to make the reader think, and also to skip the security obstacles.
The solution, however, is clear and distinct.
"This story burned within me as a writer because it presents a dilemma that is seemingly impossible, but imaginable, and a way to learn how the institution treats its people and their problems, and the conflicts within which they live."
The institution, he says, is studded with good people, Israeli and honest patriots, with families, "who use a foreign, dual identity, to do acts that harm others."
The professional dilemmas he describes - for example whether to stop an operation to help a fishing boat that has sunk and transmits distress signals - accompany each operation.
"It did not happen in reality, but I commanded Abu Jihad's assassination operation, which according to foreign sources came to him on Navy ships. And if such an issue arose during it, whether to change direction to help a ship in distress - the answer was unequivocally no."
So simple? Ignore and continue to sail?
"Ignore. I'll be even a little stiffer than that. The success of the operation comes before saving the people."
How far do you draw this line? Because in the book, the institution poisons the scientist's son to get to him.
"If I were sitting in the discussion group of this operation, I would try to make sure as much as possible that we make this young boy sick, but that he will not die from the disease. You can never know one hundred percent, because you do not do preliminary tests to see that he has no "An allergy or something. And yet, I think I would approve of it."
You bring up another dilemma in the book that you have probably encountered many times. The institution enlists in a book a scientist, who is ostensibly a fool. She does not know that she works for the Mossad or for Israel. And you write that she does not know what awaits her: that if they catch her they may torture her, they may rape her, they may kill her. How many people have fallen into this reality that is not in their favor, just because the State of Israel has decided that they are essential to it?
"There is a clear difference between the treatment of our fighter, the Israeli, and someone on the other side. We will protect our people at all costs, but when a foreign agent falls, we are sorry, close the case and move on to the next agent. I do not think there is any agent operator who does not sleep well at night because of this. "
Abu Jihad, 1986, Photo: AP
There are no dilemmas?
"Of course there is, but we have no choice. The State of Israel is in an existential struggle, and as Mossad official Israel Perlov once told me, a man with many rights in this area of operation - we can not afford to be vegetarians. We just have no choice. We take innocent people .
There is something here and vice versa.
"Ask me if I am against torture? Yes, I am absolutely against. And yet, would I in a specific case approve of torture? Yes. Unfortunately, sometimes I am in favor of doing things that I am against."
"The border is in integrity"
The world of espionage has changed dramatically in recent years.
It is no longer James Bond who works alone (or in a group) beyond enemy lines, but an increasing use of technologies, collaborations, messengers who do the work for you so that you do not endanger your warriors.
The Mossad has carried out quite a few operations in recent years, according to foreign publications, but almost all of them have been carried out by emissaries, not blue-and-white fighters.
It is very different from the world that Reicher-Atir grew up in and commanded.
And yet, he believes, even if operational methods change - the human factor remains important as it was.
"If it is possible not to endanger our fighters and find another way, I am always in favor, but sometimes there is no substitute. Certainly not for human sources who are near, who hear, who are close."
The world revealed to the reader of his new book is challenging, creative, bold, but also borderless - in imagination and money.
If you need a yacht, buy a yacht, if you need luxury hotels or ski vacations - this is what it will be.
The success of the operation is above all, and for it almost everything is allowed to be done.
Cover of the book "Very Useful Death" by Yiftach Reicher-Atir,
Reicher-Atir distinguishes between staff members, who live modestly according to precise ESL, strict admissions and control, and the operational world. “With the operational fighter, the economic consideration does not exist at all.
You make an operation, you prepare it the best you can, and you want it to succeed.
"These are dangerous operations in which getting involved is disastrous, and no one wants to get involved because we saved about $ 2,000."
But there is no limit to it.
"The limit is the integrity of the people. To make a cheap operation and save expenses is a bad consideration. When making an operation then the purpose of the operation is the main thing, and for it everything is sanctified. Intelligence costs money, a lot of money. When I prepared Abu Jihad's operation I came to Ehud Barak Sign the checks in favor of the weapons we needed.
I told him 'listen, there is nothing to do'.
He was horrified and signed. "
He is convinced that this is also true in the activation of sources.
"This whole story of the agents is hardly an F-15 flight hour. Therefore, if you have to fly first class or get money, they will fly first class and get money. After all, sources at the top of the enemy's decision - makers are invaluable. "The spy who was an institution in Egypt on the eve of the Yom Kippur War."
Another profession that you have in the book, and I wonder if it still needs the same intensity, is the blue-and-white killers. Because today, most assassinations are done according to foreign publications by apostles.
"I am sure this ability must be maintained. Because there may come a day when we will have a goal that will be important enough, and it will not be possible to use others."
And the elimination policy in general, is it still relevant?
"In my opinion, this is the right policy. First of all, there is justice in it, and it is certainly much better than dropping a bomb on a house with 40 people, only one of which is the target. "It causes thousands of refugees. If instead you can eliminate the head, it's justified. We are not eliminating innocent or uninvolved people, but people who are responsible for what they do."
Some would argue that these assassinations lead nowhere. We killed Abbas Mousavi, and replaced him with Hassan Nasrallah, who is a thousand times worse than him. In your time we killed Abu Jihad, who might have been a pragmatic partner in dialogue. The few assassinations that really changed the face of history for the better.
"We are not statesmen, we are operations people. It is our job to initiate these operations, and put them in the hands of the decision-makers, and for them to decide. I think the fact that Nasrallah is threatened and limited is very helpful."
As someone who has been in such operations more than once or twice, how hard is it to hear about them from the side and not be a part of it?
"In the first years after I graduated, it was difficult, because I could feel at my fingertips what was being done there. But over time, it fades. "I would not say no."
Ehud, your hero in the book, says that in his life he would not have sent a warrior to an operation that he was not willing to carry out himself. Is this absolutely true in all operations?
"This is absolutely true of me, and it's one of the things that was difficult for me when I moved from the operations side to the side that sends the fighters. Was in Abu Jihad, and a black ren participated in the abduction of Sheikh Obeid.
The dilemma you bring up in the book is more complicated - an operation from which there is no going back.
"There is no way a commander would send a fighter for such an operation. Categorically, it will not happen."
The subject arises in the book in debates and discussions between its protagonists.
Not everyone agrees on the path chosen, and some even try to thwart it.
Reicher-Atir says that such discussions also take place in reality.
"In the planning part, there are endless disagreements. In the value part, too, there are arguments, which can reach very high tones."
Not at any cost
As mentioned, Reicher-Atir had to go through not-so-simple butts until the book was published.
Despite the years that have passed since his retirement, special operations have passed through the world and his exposure to secrets has led to careful control of every story and idea.
"Anyone who has been in the security service, who holds true secrets that could endanger people, should be very sensitive to that," he says.
"However, to come to that person - who is a kind of artist, whose writing is his art - and tell him that he can not write at all, it is unlikely. The middle ground must be found."
And yet, be careful with yourself.
"Because they want to be on the safe side, and go over every word, and send every matter for examination in all sorts of places. In" Caesarea "(the operations department of the institution;
It changed the plot a bit.
"Some executives keep leaflets with things they wrote, saying it's in a safe. I do not do that, and I try to be careful. I still see myself as a system person, and if someone tells me I'm doing damage, I will not write the book. More important to me is not To do harm than to write another book. "
But the enemy is not an idiot. he understands.
"The enemy knows what we're coming for, but I don't think he understands how we do it. An intelligence picture, even of the enemy, is built from a lot of details. You should not give them things you don't have to for free."
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us