By Joe Berk
I like to read, and when I hear about a good book, odds are I’ll pull up Amazon and order a copy. The Wall Street Journal had a positive review on Operation Wrath of God, and that was enough for me. The WSJ is the only paper we take any more, having given up on the LA Times, the NY Times, and local Daily Bulletin rag. The other papers were just too biased in their reporting (and people wonder why print is dead).
Operation Wrath of God is about secret ties that have existed for decades between the Israeli Mossad, the European intelligence services, and our intelligence community. The premise is that although the Europeans were outwardly incensed when the Israelis struck back at the terrorists for the Munich massacre (and continued for years to do so on European soil), they (and we) continued to share current intel on their whereabouts. On the Munich massacre, you may recall that was when the bad guys murdered Israeli Olympians.
Even though European governments and their press had their noses bent out of shape at the retaliatory Israeli actions, these same European governments continued to provide the Israelis detailed information about where the terrorists were located. Basically, the Europeans made things a lot easier for the Israelis to strike back, even though European governments publicly condemned the Israelis for doing so. The author makes the case that the Israeli Mossad provided such good intelligence on nearly everything going on in the world, it made sense to keep the lines of communication flowing both ways.
The book covered essentially all the major Israeli intelligence operations related to the Israeli payback, and parts of it read almost like a novel. That’s the good news in this book review. The bad news is that a lot of the book is painfully redundant. I found myself annoyed at reading essentially the same stories two or three times. The text comprises 255 pages (with another almost 90 pages of acknowledgements, citations, and index materials). I think the same information could have been presented much more concisely.
That said, Operation Wrath of God was a good read and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in these topics. I’m glad I bought it.
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