Rise and Kill First  Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations is a 2018 book by Ronen Bergman about the history of targeted assassinations by Israel's intelligence services. Its author says that Israel has assassinated more people than any other western country since World War II. It portrays the assassinations of British officials, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leaders, and Iranian nuclear scientists. To write the book, Bergman carried out about a thousand interviews with political figures and secret agents and consulted "thousands" of documents. "Rise and Kill First" describes the targeted killings carried out by Israeli secret agencies and the personalities and the tactics used. The book's title is inspired by a statement in the Talmud: "If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first". Based on a thousand interviews and thousands of documents, the book is the story of many political and intelligence figures such as agents of Mossad, Shin Bet, and the Israeli military, some of them speaking under their real identity. Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime ministers, and Meir Dagan, a recent head of Mossad for eight years, were among those interviewed. The book begins with the founding of Bar Giora in 1907 by Yitzhak Ben Zvi. The organization later became Hashomer, then the Haganah and finally the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). According to Bergman, Israeli covert agencies have undertaken targeted assassinations against "Arab adversaries throughout its pre- and post-statehood periods". They have assassinated more people than any western country since World War II, carrying out "at least" 2,700 assassination operations in the seventy-year period since Israel's formation. "Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target's life, armed drones, exploding mobile phones, spare tires with remote-controlled bombs, assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of Muslim clerics," are among the methods described in the book used by Israel to carry out assassinations. Bergman discusses the assassination of British officials, Hamas, Hezbollah and PLO leaders, and Iranian nuclear scientists. According to the author, some of the assassinated individuals include: PLO leader Yasser Arafat; Ali Hassan Salameh, leader of Black September; Abu Jihad, Arafat's aide and co-founder of the Fatah party; Yahya Ayyash known as the "Engineer", Hamas' chief bomb maker; and Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter.