Palestinians pray over the bodies of eight members of the Al Haj family, who were killed in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp, July 10, 2014. Israel said it was targeting Hamas militants. Photo by Eyad Al Baba, APA Images. In his voluminous book “Rise and Kill First” (2019), Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman opens with the blunt statement that ‘…since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world.’ This comes to nearly 2300 operations, killing several thousand people. The statement is controversial and there is no empirical evidence to support it. In fact, it’s quite possible that in their wars in the Middle East and North Africa in the last three-quarters of a century, France, Britain and the United States engaged as frequently and indiscriminately as Israel in assassinations and controversial black-ops.