Jihad, Isser Harel

by Isser Harel

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0552109312
• ISBN13: 9780552109314
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: CORGI BOOKS
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Mediocre formulaic 70s terrorism novel by the original Israeli spymaster

Isser Harel was the legendary first director of the Mossad who also served as the head of the Israeli Shin Bet internal security service. Harel wrote several books in the 70s including that legendary true spy story, The House on Garibaldi Street, about the Israeli capture and trial of Nazi Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann that was made into a popular movie. Jihad was his second most famous book, a novel about a plot to use a former SS Officer and Jet pilot named Strecker to bomb a high profile Moslem target in the hopes of igniting an anti-Israel Jihad in the Middle East. The plot is hatched by "George", the Arab-Christian leader of a Marxist Arab Nationalist group called "the Front." Savvy readers will recognize that "George" is George Habash and "the Front" is his terrorist organization, the infamous Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP was a staunchly Pan-Arab, nationalist, secular and socialist organization that allied with European Leftists in their war against the West, against Israel, against King Abdullah of Jordan, and against the other Palestinian terror groups including Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Arafat and Habash had a love-hate relationship throughout their murderous careers. But as the Palestinian organizations moved into the 90s, they linked hearts with the Iranian revolution which led to the creation of more radical groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and a more Islamic direction for the other Palestinian groups. The Pan-Arab Socialism of Habash lost popularity and was marginalized. Jihad is not a great novel--even for mindless entertainment value. The middle parts about the escape of the former SS Officer turned Jet Pilot drag on. The title itself is misleading as Jihad is bland and doesn't evoke the interesting angles offered by the sometimes convoluted plot. But the novel's ending is quite good, well worth getting to, as the final plot twist (one I suspected from the beginning) is well-delivered. Harel's writing style is formulaic. The 1970s were filled with weird conspiracy thrillers about ex-Nazis (Think: The Odessa File or The Boys from Brazil). And for writers of Harel's generation--Jewish soldiers seeking to avenge the Holocaust on the heads of all the SS war-criminals believed to have escaped after the war--the fixation on Nazis as the ultimate bad guys was still very strong. The modern informed reader might wonder why the Front couldn't find a good Iraqi Baathist-Socialist pilot to do the job with a lot less fuss. It was clear to me that Harel wrote this novel with a secondary intention: to sow the salt of division into the Palestinian camp to drive a wedge between the Arab Nationalist Socialists of the PFLP and the Islamic extremists in their midst. As such, this novel is a classic bit of strategic Psyop that does a good job showing how little the two groups had in common. But we are living with the fruit of that division today. Jihad is now back in style. And it didn't need any assistance from ex-SS Nazi war criminals to make it happen. For an interesting period piece on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict circa 1975, Jihad is worth seeking out. But for all others, this anachronistic bit of formulaic intrigue is barely worth recommending.