Yos­si Mel­man is a fea­ture writer and colum­nist for Israel’s dai­ly news­pa­per Haaretz. Dan Raviv, now a CBS radio news cor­re­spon­dent sta­tioned in Wash­ing­ton, DC, report­ed for over two decades from the Mid­dle East and oth­er places. 

This col­lab­o­ra­tive effort shows just how Israel’s clan­des­tine ser­vices, includ­ing the fabled Mossad, work. The book reads like a movie and read­ers are giv­en front row seats to view secret oper­a­tion after secret oper­a­tion and learn how Israeli oper­a­tives went the world over to com­plete their mis­sions. Some of the mate­r­i­al is pub­lished here for the first time. 

Sto­ries are told about mis­sions under­tak­en in the Arab cap­i­tals of Cairo and Dam­as­cus. The real sto­ry behind Munich 1972 and the teams that went out in search of the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ists who mur­dered the Israeli Olympic team and its coach­es is relat­ed in detail. And the authors explain how the Jan­u­ary 2010 assas­si­na­tion of Mah­moud Al Mab­houh in Dubai was car­ried out by a com­plex array of peo­ple and set of arrange­ments from around the world. 

Raviv and Mel­man extend the world of spy­ing to include an expla­na­tion of the Stuxnet, the com­put­er virus that attacked the Iran­ian nuclear pro­gram. The authors draw a time­line and include a map detail­ing how Stuxnet made its way to Iran and par­a­lyzed the country. 

This book is not sim­ply a grip­ping sto­ry of past tri­umphs and tragedies. It is an attempt to piece togeth­er recent oper­a­tions and to even offer spec­u­la­tion about what may hap­pen in future clan­des­tine operations. 

And then it gets even bet­ter. The most fas­ci­nat­ing com­po­nent of Spies Against Armaged­don has to do with the oper­a­tions of Kidon. Kidon is a unit in the Mossad — but it is real­ly the Mossad’s Mossad. The ultra secret task of Kidon is to assas­si­nate and to sab­o­tage. Kidon oper­a­tives are sent around the world and there is nowhere, noth­ing, and nobody they can­not get to. 

Spies Against Armaged­don is a fun and excit­ing read. It is a book for any­one who wants to learn about Israel’s spe­cial weapons, the Israeli intel­li­gence services.