Israel's Most Legendary Operations: The History of the Jewish State's Famous Intelligence Operations and Special Forces Raids

"He would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction." A subordinate on trial at Nuremberg paraphrased a boast of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Otto Adolf Eichmann with these words, summarizing the mood and character of Adolf Hitler's most notorious lieutenant for all posterity. Of course, Eichmann’s story is best known for the way in which the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, kidnapped him out of Argentina in 1960 to put him on trial back in the Jewish State. While judges found him not guilty of personally killing anyone, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other crimes before being executed.  The Munich Olympics Massacre marked a milestone in international preparedness for terrorist attacks and operations, and the Israelis certainly excelled in this. For better or for worse, the Munich massacre drew a line in the sand, and it set the tone for Israel’s response to terrorism in the future, including the subsequent Operation Wrath of God, which some historians consider the most successful manhunt in history. A few months before Munich, on May 8, 1972, a new style of warfare came to the fore when 4 members of Black September hijacked Belgian Sabena Flight 571 en route from Brussels to Tel Aviv. From a security perspective, this was quite an unprecedented situation, as an operation to free hostages on board a commercial airliner had never been tried before. In the process of countering these attacks and hijackings, the Israelis developed valuable skills in commando operations and hostage rescue, and all of it would lead to unique special operations raids, the most spectacular of which occurred at Entebbe in 1976, thousands of miles away.