Brian Gould

You're a bit late with this review, aren't you? The present (third) edition was published in January 2007 in the UK and a month earlier in the US.

The overall anti-Israel tone of the review sounds more like the Guardian or the Independent than the Spectator. The first three paragraphs have little or nothing to do with the book -- the softest of soft leads. Also, to describe the author as "an Irish-resident Welshman" is to overlook the Palestinian element in his family background. His access to Israeli sources is clearly much greater than your reviewer gives him credit for.

David Nordell

The first edition of this book was, as Jonathan Sumption writes, a collection of material culled from other published sources, fantasists' stories, and large amounts of tosh; and I'm sure that he is correct in saying that the same is true of the latest edition.

But Sumption himself is guilty of the same shoddiness and inaccuracies of which he rightly accuses Gordon Thomas. The Mossad has indeed always been good at HUMINT, but not because of a shortage of technological prowess, which the Israeli intelligence community has always had in spades (the beeper, for example, was invented by the Shabak, the internal security service, in order to communicate discreetly with agents in the field, and the Mossad's own bag of tricks rivals anything carried around by James Bond). Jonathan Pollard wasn't recruited and run by the Mossad, but by a semi-private intelligence fiefdom within the defence ministry called LAKAM (the bureau for scientific liaison), which was run by a former senior Mossad man who had been rejected for the top job. Mossad has had outstanding successes in intelligence collection and analysis as well as special operations, but it's the nature of its work that these don't get publicised. The Mossad has also been very successful in developing and maintaining Israel's relations with foreign countries that don't, or at the time didn't, have official diplomatic relations with Israel.

There's certainly plenty to say about the Mossad's inefficiencies, operational failures, and management cock-ups, as well as the success stories. But neither Gordon Thomas nor Jonathan Sumption are close enough to the real facts to reveal these. A little humility would not be out of place.

Cui Bono

"Gordon Thomas is an Irish-resident Welshman," says it all really.

Brian Gould

Not everybody agrees with your reviewer's judgment that the Mossad is ineffective:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/995077.html

Omadhaun

Mr. Sumption's review of the book- or rather his opinion on the Mossad and Israel- is obviously tainted by his preconceptions which ,as an earlier commentator stated, are more in line with the Guardian than in any objective publication.
When push gets to shove- I would much rather be protected by the fallible Mossad [yes who go out and assassinate/kill enemies] than the CIA or most western intelligence agencies.