Operation Wrath of God, by Aviva Guttmann, is an account of Israel's assassination campaign based largely on Club de Berne archives of secret communications between intelligence agencies of a number of countries.

This story is told in an engaging manner without leaving out the minute details that connect the dots. Her research in the archives is used to flesh out, to either support or refute, what had been assumed previously. The completely new information is both fascinating and, to any thoughtful reader, concerning.

If assassination by a government is an acceptable form of punishment, without any trial or sentence, then how does one draw the line between which instances it can be used and when a more civilized form of criminal punishment be used? For the governments giving support through secret channels that also purport to be governments "of the people" (and I don't mean just the US but any government that claims to be a democracy), how do you justify telling your people you're opposed to either extrajudicial murder or allowing murderers to operate within your own borders but allow your intelligence community to do the opposite? These and many more questions come to mind and they aren't based on this one single campaign but on the moral and ethical position all of these countries took. But then, as is evident in our current situation, these countries are all morally and ethically bankrupt, from "targeted murder" to genocide, they will rationalize whatever serves their goal of power and unwarranted feeling of superiority. If countries are going to do this, they certainly have lost the reasonable ability to criticize those being oppressed for resorting to such acts. So we're all terrorists now, though the terrorist "experts" like to draw the line at nation-states vs other groups. So the same acts serving the same purpose of terrorizing is okay if a government does it but terrorism if an oppressed people do it. And there you have our current screwed up world.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad's Operation Wrath of God.
This is unbelievable and we need to uncover this truth to the whole world to know.