Andrew Cockburn in LRB: ‘For Israel, it seems, there is no political problem that can’t be solved, at least in part, by the elimination of individuals.’

And: ‘In Rise and Kill First (2018), his [Ronen Bergman’s] encyclopedic history of the programme, Bergman reports that by the year 2000 Israel had launched some five hundred targeted killing operations. By the time the book came out, in 2018, it had conducted eight hundred more.’

And: ‘The mechanism for the sanguinary cooperation was an organisation called the Club de Berne. An informal association of security agencies, mostly European but also including Mossad and the FBI, it was set up in 1969 and has operated without public oversight ever since.’

Cockburn: ‘Many had their own record of dirty work: the British with respect to Northern Ireland, the French in dealing with Algeria, the Italians with the Red Brigades.’

One dirty hand washes the other.

(a sf 2092)