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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Chaim Weizmann

A Bad Friend

18 Sat Mar 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on A Bad Friend

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Abraham Isaac Kook, Ahad Ha'am, Albert Einstein, All India Khilafat Committee, Arab, Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl, CENTO, Central Treaty Organisation, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, HaMossad leModiʿin uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim, Henry Polak, Hermann Kallenbach, Immanuel Olsvanger, INC, India, Indian National Congress, Israel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jew, Khilafat Movement, MEA, Ministry of External Affairs, Mohandas Gandhi, Mossad, Muslim, Muslim League, Narasimha Rao, Nicolas Blarel, Pakistan, Palestine Liberation Organisation, PL 480, PLO, Public Law 480, RAW, Theodor Herzl, Zalman Shazar

The Evolution of India's Israel PolicyBlarel, Nicolas. The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy: Continuity, Change, and Compromise since 1922. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015. 428 pp.

India’s relations with Israel have fast emerged, since the end of the Cold War, as among the most important for the South Asian nation. A vital source of arms and intelligence, Jerusalem has become Delhi’s third-largest defence vendor within 25 years of establishing full diplomatic relations. Additionally, India relies on Israeli expertise in agriculture, and trade between the two countries, currently hovering around $5 billion, is expected to double as soon as a free trade agreement in the works in finalised. Despite the strategic value of the Indo-Israeli relationship, it has somehow not been a popular subject of study among academics and policy analysts. Public understanding is mostly shaped by media reports that are, by their very nature, shallow and temporal. In these climes, Nicolas Blarel’s The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy: Continutity, Change, and Compromise since 1922 is a much-needed survey and analysis of relations with one of Delhi’s most valued partners.

Although the partnership between the two almost-twin modern republics now appears to be a natural alliance, their history has been rocky, frustrating, and at times even antagonistic. Instead of beginning at the seemingly obvious chronological markers of Indian independence and the creation of Israel, Blarel recounts his tale from the aftermath of the Balfour declaration in 1917 when Indian opinion on a Jewish state first began to form. It is commonly believed that Indian views on Israel were forged by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and they remained unchanged until Narasimha Rao established full diplomatic relations in 1992. Blarel challenges this notion on two counts – first, that Gandhi had such a profound influence on the foreign policy of independent India, and second, that India’s Israel policy was so inflexible. In fact, Blarel argues, Gandhi and Nehru showed an evolution in their thinking on Israel, as did the foreign policy of independent India.

Gandhi’s first impulse on the Jewish question was to oppose the partition of Palestine.This was informed more by the domestic politics in India at the time than any proper grappling with the issues plaguing the Jewish community. The late 19th century had seen a sudden surge in pan-Islamic sentiment among Indian Muslims and the British victory over the Ottoman Empire in the First World War and the subsequent uncertainty in the fate of the caliphate agitated them. In an effort to win over the Muslim community from the Muslim League and bring them into the fold of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi supported the All India Khilafat Committee in their protest against the British. The Indian nationalist movement thus exploited Muslim concerns over Palestine to forge a united front between Hindus and Muslims in India.

The Jewish Agency was keen on winning the support of Indian nationalists such as Gandhi and Nehru for they believed it would give a political boost to their aspirations. Furthermore, they had also noticed the impact of Indian Muslim sensibilities on British policies in the Middle East. David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann themselves met with and also sent other important Zionists such as Immanuel Olsvanger to meet with Indian leaders to try and convince them of the justness of Jewish demands in Judea. Gandhi was already somewhat aware of the plight of European Jews through his friendship with Hermann Kallenbach, Henry Polak, and others in South Africa yet the Jewish Agency could not win either Nehru or Gandhi over to their side. The reasons, again, were rooted in Indian domestic politics. First, Gandhi did not wish to alienate Indian Muslims whom he perceived to be sympathetic towards the Arabs.

Second, the Indian leader did not accept the precepts of political Zionism. In a letter to Albert Einstein, Gandhi agreed that he could understand the spiritual desire of the Jewish people to return to Palestine but that did not give them any political rights. The Indian leader saw Zionism as a cultural phenomenon as Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg advocated, or a spiritual quest as Abraham Isaac Kook did, but not a political movement as Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl strategised. This was perhaps largely because Gandhi could not accept the argument for a confessional state in the Middle East and oppose a similar claim in India for Pakistan.

Finally, Gandhi could not come to terms with Zionist methods in pursuing their objectives on two counts – he could not condone the violence of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi and the Lohamei Herut Yisrael and he did not like how the Jewish Agency was willing to work with the British when they should have been opposing imperialism. Here, Gandhi did not seem to notice that Jewish support for Britain was largely for self-preservation from Arab mobs that had taken to attacking Jewish settlements with increasing frequency since the early 1920s.

Germany’s persecution of the Jews during World War II did not change Gandhi’s views on a Jewish state. Though he condemned the atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish people in Europe, he did not think they should dispossess others in Palestine for the faults of Europeans. However, perhaps due to the details of the Holocaust becoming widely known, Gandhi seems to have had a slight change of heart in 1946 that is not popularly known. In an interview with American journalist Louis Fischer, the Indian leader agreed that the Jews had a prior claim to the land in the Fertile Crescent but criticised their reliance on imperial powers to achieve their goals. In another interview that same year, Gandhi again agreed that the Jews had a case for a state but had squandered their good will and support by resorting to terrorist means.

As Blarel points out, Gandhi’s views on Israel did evolve between Khilafat and independence but they did not have too much of an impact on Indian foreign policy. That honour was left to Nehru, whose views were not as similar to his mentor’s as is commonly believed. In principle, Nehru was more supportive of Jewish political aspirations than Gandhi was; he accepted that their immigration into the region had substantially improved standards of living in Palestine and was impressed by Jewish achievements in science, the arts, business, and politics. Like Gandhi, he rejected the religious basis for statehood but rather than define the question in religio-cultural terms, Nehru saw the Palestinian question as a nationalist one rather than a religious one. This gave the Jewish Agency a little more room to manoeuvre but maintained a firm position on the viability of Pakistan.

The Muslim League craftily leveraged the pan-Islamic sentiment of Indian Muslims to pin the Congress into an anti-Zionist corner. They would threaten the British with unrest and the Congress with a fractured nationalist struggle if either sided with the Zionists. This same dynamic carried on post independence as Pakistan tried to build a Muslim coalition around it against India, particularly over Kashmir. In an effort to maintain consistency between its positions on Pakistan and Israel, appease the Muslim community in India, and counter Pakistani propaganda in the Middle East, India slowly slid into the anti-Zionist camp.

These philosophical contortions sometimes meant that India found itself on no one’s side. During the debate in the United Nations over the Mandate, India insisted on a single state in Palestine with two autonomous regions to the frustration of both Arab and Jew! Finally, when the creation of Israel was declared, India waited for two years to extend recognition. However, in an attempt to still be seen as neutral between the two sides, Nehru refused to establish full diplomatic relations with the new state. The Indian prime minister argued that the time was not ripe so soon after the dismemberment of Pakistan from India to vex Indian Muslims by sidling up to the Zionist state. Interestingly, this did not stop him from requesting Israeli assistance in technology and agriculture through the offices of Indian socialists who had maintained good relations with Israeli kibbutzim.

Despite requesting aid from Israel, Nehru and the Congress treated the Jewish state almost like their own untouchable. Israel was allowed to convert a pre-independence office of the Jewish Agency in Bombay into its consulate, though the consul was kept away from any official functions in Delhi. In fact, Delhi reprimanded Tel Aviv and even closed the consulate for six years from 1962-1968 for celebrating Israel’s independence day in a hotel in Delhi. When Israeli president Zalman Shazar requested a halt in India for rest and refuelling on his way to Nepal in March 1966, the Indian government did not allow him to land in Delhi but in Calcutta. Shazar was not even given a five-minute courtesy reception at the airport by either the government of India or of West Bengal.

The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy contends that Delhi was not locked in a Nehruvian mindset on Israel from 1947 until normalisation in 1992 but adapted its policies to suit the circumstances. Blarel argues that Indian policy always reflected realism and was not moralpolitik. India was dependent on the Suez Canal for trade and oil for its economy from the Arab world; the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967 hurt the Indian economy as the canal was closed for a time during which the cost of Indian exports to Europe and the New World rose between 15 and 35 percent. India hoped that its support of the Palestinian cause would insulate it from economic shocks as well as gain reciprocal support from Arab states for the Indian position on Kashmir and isolate Pakistan in the process.

After Nehru, the evolution of India’s Israel policy was towards greater inflexibility and stridency. As Blarel observes, several things had changed since the end of the Nehru era. Since 1967, Israel had shifted firmly into the American camp and introduced an imperial power into the region; the Palestinian situation became far bleaker after the Six-Day War. In 1975, India co-sponsored a resolution in the United Nations that equated Zionism with racism. In general, much like Indian non-alignment, its Israel policy was veering towards one side.

One major lacuna in The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy is that it does not explain why Israel sought closer ties with India. The reason was obvious before 1948: association with Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence. In the first decade after creation, Israel believed that India’s international influence as the leader of a bloc of newly independent Afro-Asian states would be helpful in gaining recognition from the global community. However, India’s influence waned as its economy failed to grow commensurate to its population and it lost a war against China. In addition to the hostile treatment Israel received in the United Nations as well as bilaterally from India, why did Tel Aviv continue to seek close ties with Delhi?

In fact, Israel’s efforts were commendable – Israel was among the first countries to provide military and medical assistance to India during the Sino-Indian War in 1962, supplying heavy mortars and ammunition. It provided artillery, ammunition, and instructors to India in 1965 during the Second India-Pakistan War, and during the War of Bangladeshi Liberation in 1971, Israel even helped India train the Mukti Bahini. Of course, Delhi did not acknowledge any of this, thanking Tel Aviv only for its medical aid. In 1968, when India established its intelligence service, Research & Analysis Wing, then prime minister Indira Gandhi reached out to Israel’s HaMossad leModiʿin uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim – Mossad – to help train the fledgling service. While Indira Gandhi was whining about US PL 480 food aid being “ship to mouth” in 1966, she had simultaneously rejected Israeli offers of grains to assist India in staving off famine.

While India went to such great lengths to win Arab admiration, it found little to show for its efforts. Most Arab states remained neutral or favoured Pakistan in its wars with India, some even providing arms and ammunition and safe havens for the Pakistani air force from Indian bombardment. When India tried to gain membership to the Organisation of Islamic Countries on the basis of its substantial Muslim population, Pakistan was able to torpedo its application by threatening to walk out of the conference. In an effort to please the Arabs, India had even supported the Arabs in their decision to cut oil production and raise oil prices in 1973.

In the Middle East, India reserved all its moral admonitions for Israel alone. While it criticised Tel Aviv for siding with imperial powers, India did not utter a word of protest when Iraq, Iran, and Turkey joined the Central Treaty Organisation. Delhi’s condemnation of terrorist methods applied only to the Zionists but not the Palestine Liberation Organisation. In fact, India recognised the PLO in 1975, 11 years after its formation and 17 years before it accorded the same status to Israel.

Blarel explains that India found it difficult to change its policy towards Israel not only for strategic and domestic electoral considerations but also because an orthodoxy had materialised in Indian politics and within the Ministry of External Affairs. While strong prime ministers like Nehru and Indira Gandhi could control the MEA, weaker leaders found it more difficult to do so. In that sense, it was a miracle that Rao managed to establish relations with Israel despite ruling over a weak coalition. The strain of recognition was evident from the fact that there was little movement in ties between the two countries for almost a decade thereafter.

The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy is a veritable tour-de-force in an important field that has few scholars. Blarel has assiduously mined the archives, published records, and private collections in India, Israel, and at the United Nations, a task that deserves commendation for the difficulty in doing historical research in India. The result is an magisterial survey and analysis of Indo-Israeli relations over a span of 70 years. The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy is also a wealth of information, containing many nuggets of interesting and sometimes counter-intuitive factoids. For anyone interested in Indian policies towards the Middle East and particularly Israel, this is an unavoidable book.

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In Blood and Fire Shall Judea Rise

11 Sat Mar 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on In Blood and Fire Shall Judea Rise

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Anonymous Soldiers, Avraham Stern, Balfour Declaration, Bar Giora, Bruce Hoffman, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, David Raziel, Etzel, Ha Irgun Ha Tzvai Ha Leumi b'Eretz Yisrael, Haganah, Hashomer, havlagah, Hayalim Almonim, Irgun, Israel, Lehi, Loḥamei Ḥerut Yisrael, Menachem Begin, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Palestine Police Force, Palmach, Shlomo Ben Yosef, terrorism, Yitzhak Yezernitsky, Ze'ev Jabotinsky

Hoffman, Bruce. Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. New York: Vintage Books, 2016. 672 pp.

Does terrorism work? That is the provocative question with which Bruce Hoffman begins his book. Although politicians such as Ian Smith, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher and scholars such as Thomas Schelling, Caleb Carr, and Max Abrahms tend to answer in the negative, such a widespread belief in its ineffectiveness is not shared by terrorists themselves. Most terrorist groups have failed in achieving their political aims but the few success stories – Ireland (1922), Israel (1948), Cyprus (1960), and Algeria (1962) – mean that the phenomenon deserves closer scrutiny. No one doubts the ability of terrorism to spark off greater conflagrations – the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001 – but some terrorist groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Hezbollah have achieved a modicum of success through their violent antecedents. Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 analyses one of the success stories, Israel, as the title suggests, to understand the reasons for its success.

Contrary to the traditional Israeli historiography that lays all the credit for the formation of the Jewish state at the feet of David Ben Gurion and the Jewish Agency, Hoffman argues that Israel might not have been possible without the efforts of its most notorious organisations, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi – known by its acronym as Etzel, or Irgun to Anglophones – and the Lohamei Herut Yisrael, or Lehi. These two groups relentlessly targeted British assets and personnel in Judea and made the British Mandate of Palestine simply untenable. Towards the end of British rule in the Levant, 100,000 soldiers – about the same number London had stationed in India – had been deployed in Judea to protect British assets and maintain law and order but to no avail.

The roots of unrest in the Fertile Crescent have to do with Jewish immigration into the region. For the longest time, despite the rhetoric of yearning for Zion and the pogroms in Europe, Jews had little interest in migrating to Palestine. The Ottoman Empire, though welcoming of Jews in other parts of its domains, had strictly curtailed Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. It was only after Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat in 1896 that the number of migrants rose to a trickle. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was a tocsin to the local Arab population; already restless about increasing Jewish migration and land acquisition, the thought of these European interlopers getting their own state on Arab land was unacceptable. As a result, Jewish settlements began to come under frequent attack from marauding Arabs. In this phase, the Jewish population was largely dependent on the British and sought their protection.

Unfortunately for the Jews, the Palestine Police Force was inadequately manned and funded to be of much use. The community had to look within to organise their own defence. The Haganah was founded in 1920 but it was not the first such organisation: the Bar Giora, named after a leader of a Jewish rebel faction during the First Jewish-Roman War, was founded in 1907. This group became the Hashomer in 1909, which grew into the Haganah which would go on to become the core of the Israeli Defence Forces after independence. Despite its lack of training and arms, the Haganah became a fairly effective force against isolated Arab attacks. Against large disturbances, however, such as the Arab Riots of 1920-1, Britain was the sole guarantor of security.

Hoffman builds the narrative event by event, until the reader can not only feel the hope, fear, frustration, and political tension of the times but almost the desert heat and dust. In a marvellous telling, Anonymous Soldiers explains how London tried to balance two antithetical commitments to two people, Arabs and Jews, but failed in pleasing either. Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, appointed the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British in 1921, invoked Islam into Arab nationalism and battle cries of “There is no God but Allah, Mohammad’s religion came by the sword” rang through Palestine. Interestingly, Husseini’s mobs identified themselves as Muslim and Arab but not Palestinian – that identity was yet to form.

The waves of Arab revolts – 1924, 1929, 1933, and 1936-9 – and what the Yishuv – Jewish settlements – saw as soft imperial policy against them convinced some Jewish elements to give up on havlagah, or restraint. Until then, the Jewish community had worked with the British in maintaining the peace despite disagreements over Jewish immigration. The Haganah even received rudimentary training from the British to help defend Jewish areas. Even Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, believed Britain to be a friendly power and the Jews’ natural ally in the Middle East.

The hanging of Shlomo Ben Yosef in 1938 for attempting to blow up a commuter bus containing Arabs was a turning point. Jabotinsky began to see the British as unduly harsh on the Jews in comparison to the Arabs in that Ben Yosef had been given the maximum sentence for his crime even though no one had been hurt while hundreds of Arabs had received lesser sentences for similar crimes during the riots. The Etzel, founded in 1931 to provide a muscular response to the Arabs as opposed to havlagah from the Haganah, turned on the British. Until then, they had only targeted Arabs but the Ben Yosef incident disillusioned Jabotinsky about London’s motives in Palestine.

There were plenty of anti-Semites in London but the reason Whitehall had been soft on the Arabs was that they feared the repercussions of an absolute crackdown across the Muslim world. Already, British policy in Palestine was causing unrest in Iraq and among Muslims in India. Hoffman mentions the strong British anti-Semitism prevalent in the inter-war period but does not think it the primary cause for its policies which were disadvantageous to the Jewish community. Nonetheless, British racial stereotypes of the Jews caused them to make strategic blunders in their bid to control Palestine.

The outbreak of World War II complicated matters. No doubt, Germany was an enemy of the Jewish people but Britain, opposed to the Nazis in Europe, were the local enemy in their curtailment of immigration and restricting Jewish land acquisition. The Jewish Agency saw this as a betrayal of the promise made in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Shrewdly and opportunistically, however, the Haganah and Etzel threw in their lot with Britain in the war against Germany. The implicit demand was for a Jewish state once the war was over, and Jewish youth volunteered in the British army to receive training in several martial skills that would serve Israel well in 1948. Special units within the Haganah, Palmach, were established to be deployed in North Africa and other theatres of the war.

Chaim Weizzman. President, World Zionist Organisation; first president of Israel David Ben Gurion. Head of the Jewish Agency; first prime minister of Israel

The decision to cease hostilities against the British did not sit well with all of the Jewish commanders. Avraham Stern strongly disagreed with his Etzel comrades and led a split in the group to form Lehi in 1940. Surprisingly, Lehi sought alliances with Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany to fight against the British with the understanding that all of Europe’s Jews would be allowed to immigrate to Palestine. However, the alliance failed to take shape and Stern himself was captured in Tel Aviv and killed by the British in 1942.

In sharp contrast with modern Israeli covert services, Etzel and Lehi were sloppy and had several failures in the early years. It was only after Yitzhak Yezernitsky revived Lehi in 1944 and Menachem Begin took command of Etzel in 1943 that both groups began to have more of an impact on Mandatory politics.

Hoffman has tilled American, British, and Israeli archives for Anonymous Soldiers and his effort is evident. However, there are still some gaps in the story. The most obvious one is the relatively little attention the author has paid to Jabotinsky. Beyond his role in establishing organisations like Etzel in Palestine and Betar in Riga, Latvia, the Russian Zionist was the intellectual force behind a strand of Zionism that influenced many, including future prime minister Begin. What did a Jewish state mean to Jabotinsky in terms of its institutions and values?

The author’s focus on the Etzel and Lehi drowns out at least two other important voices – the Arabs and the Haganah. Anonymous Soldiers makes it seem as if the Arabs were passive spectators in the shaping of Palestine except for the riots. The Jewish community, however, had to keep one eye on their Arab neighbours even as they fought the British. The Haganah too, plays a secondary role in Hoffman’s tale but this is only partly true. For the most part, the Haganah was involved in smuggling in Jews beyond the quota allocated by the British and developing stockpiles of arms. These activities may not get the attention of, say, an assassination, but were nonetheless illegal and important to the Yishuv. Post World War II, Palmach units did carry out a series of anti-British operations that included freeing Jewish detainees, bombing British radar installations, sabotaging ships used to intercept or deport illegal Jewish immigration, destruction of vital bridges, disrupting rail services, and even an assassination.

Avraham Stern. Founder of Lohamei Herut Yisrael Yitzhak Yezernitsky. Leader, Lehi; seventh prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin. Commander, Irgun Tzvai Leumi; sixth prime minister of Israel

Part of the problem is that the book stops in 1947. Although the Haganah had always been involved in activities that went against British dictates, its most assertive phase started only after World War II. Hoffman wishes to separate the Etzel and Lehi from the Haganah but operations such as the sinking of the SS Patria in 1940 suggest that this cleavage is not as clean as is presented in Anonymous Soldiers. Perhaps the implicit assertion here is that, for a time, the Haganah collaborated with the British to hunt down Etzel and Lehi operatives with remarkable success.

Most disappointingly, Hoffman has chosen not to add an epilogue that discusses the terrorist legacy on Israel. After all, it has had two prime ministers, one from the Etzel and the other from Lehi, and a foreign minister who was the daughter of an important Etzel commander. Several other members of these organisations found their way into the Knesset and other important government institutions during their generation.

Finally, it is important to ponder on the meaning of terrorism: can the Etzel and Lehi truly be considered terrorists in an era when indiscriminate bombardment of civilians such as at Dresden was considered kosher? Some may object to this analogy, reminding us that the Allies were at war with Germany, but from the perspective of the Yishuv, they were also at war with Britain, an imperial, occupying power. Additionally, under the command of Begin, at least, the Etzel has always attempted to minimise unnecessary casualties, often calling in a bomb warning. As Hoffman mentions, Begin was shocked and horrified at the loss of life at the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946. Though Lehi has always been more indiscriminate, even they left warnings around the bombs that brought down the British embassy in Rome in October 1946.

By and large, Jewish militants were careful to target British assets and representatives of the Crown though there was undeniably some collateral damage. Yet theirs was not a campaign of wanton destruction of schools, pubs, buses, and supermarkets as the small size of the final body count for the years 1945-7 shows: some 300 people killed, most of them in one fateful attack. Wholesale slaughter was largely reserved for those who did the same to the Yishuv, namely, Arabs. These distinctions, meaningless to the victims though they may be, marks Zionist terror as different. In addition to the civilian control of the militia and the presence of a shadow government, Jewish settlers in Palestine behaved as if they already had their own state. Such oversight, and the havlagah that Etzel and Lehi scorned, makes the struggle for Israel a qualitatively different saga from the barbarism of modern terrorism. The institutional power of the Jewish Agency can be seen from the fact that upon independence, the various armed factions either disbanded or merged into the Israeli Defence Forces without any bitter and bloody internecine struggle for power.

Anonymous Soldiers is a detailed and gripping work despite some of the gaps it leaves. The title of the book, by the way, comes from Hayalim Almonim, a poem written by Stern in 1932 and also translated as ‘unknown soldiers.’ The book does not answer the question is started with – does terrorism work? The answer to that is beyond the scope of any one book. However, Hoffman’s analysis of the Israeli case puts forward a compelling hypothesis that done properly, using the right methods against the right targets, it is possible for terrorism to have at least a limited amount of success. And implicit in this revelation is that the same could be said for counter-terrorism. In this day and age, Anonymous Soldiers gives the reader much food for thought.

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