Hacker News Books

This isn't a citation, but if you're interested in the topic and learning more about to what length Israel will go to assassinate perceived enemies, I recommend "Rise and Kill First" by Ronen Bergman

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Kill-First-Targeted-Assassinatio...

I don't know the answer to your question, but if you're interested in this topic I highly recommend Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman. Very well-sourced and readable account of Israeli spycraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_and_Kill_First

Rise and Kill First - about the Mossad/Shin Bets operations against Muslim terror groups.

It's very complicated and has no good answer that would be acceptable to everyone. Pakistan is a hotbed for terrorism and radicalism; the strategy of drone strikes is not only intended to kill "ticking bombs" but also to destroy organizations and keep them busy while being constantly on the look out. Much more difficult to carry out another 9/11 when you need to sleep in a different place every day, or when your most senior operative is 23 because all of the seniors before them have perished.

It's hard to argue how effective this tactic is, being that:
a. most everything relating to this is classified
b. it's very difficult to assess how many terror operation were prevented by those actions, even if you have the classified data above.

An amazing book on this subject of state sponsored assassination I advise anyone to read is Rise And Kill First, by Ronen Bergman, detailing Israel's assassination policy from operational, political and societal perspectives - truely fascinating.

Having just finished reading Rise and Kill First on the history of Israel's targeted killings, getting your target to introduce themselves by talking loudly about their interests around them for several days is a tried-and-tested Mossad strategy. That way, the target will trust the agent more, as they think that they initiated the contact themselves.

Dear young, super smart Googlers: If your knowledge of the Middle East and terrorism goes back to ISIS/Al Qaeda - stop coding (or selling ads) and visit your local library. The history section is chalk full of wonderfully informative books that will inform your opinions.

You might find that Internet tropes about terrorism to be less than accurate.

For example, I just finished "Rise and Kill First" [1] a rather enlightening book about Israel's use of targeted assassinations going back almost 100 years. When I started reading Israel wasn't in the news, but then the whole Iran/US nuclear deal fiasco hit, and it made Netanyahu's actions all the more clear. Note, I'm not saying justified but rather that I now understand why Israel thinks and acts the way it does, and how sometimes this clashes with their normally close allies like the US.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Kill-First-Targeted-Assassinatio...

Before that, I read "Ghost Wars" [2] another beast of a book that covers US involvement in the Middle East going back to the late 1970's up to 9/11. Fascinating book about the struggle to dominate Afghanistan by regional and world powers.

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-Septe...

Before that, it was "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" [3] about the history of the CIA and the US's foreign policy in the last 100+ years.

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret/d...

Key point - These books look past recent events to provide an mostly complete understanding of these conflicts that you can't get with 20 minute Google searches and Wikipedia snippets.

* Rise and Kill First: A history of Israel viewed through their Intelligence and targeted assassination programs. Interesting insights into the individuals and departments that shaped the country and in turn region. According to the author, the Israelis had scrambled jets on multiple occasions to shoot down public airliners thought to be carrying Yasser Arafat. This was only thwarted by individuals intentionally delaying the process. Includes insights into history of the internal debate over the legality and morality of killing other nations non-combatants, sometimes on their soil.

* The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier:
Collection of stories written for the New York Times by reporter Ian Urbina. Only a dozen or so miles off-shore there are no enforced laws. Floating armories, slavery, dumping pollution, over fishing, abortion. Interesting to think all that goes on in the ocean that never really enters the public conscious.
[https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/751707831/the-outlaw-ocean-a-...]

I highly recommend Ronen Bergman's account of the Israeli covert assasination programme: Rise and Kill First [0].

It's a very nuanced book, grappling with the moral issues of a single death now to avoid multiple deaths later, and the unintended consequences of these decisions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_and_Kill_First