8.2 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Publication date 1984 Pages 376 Originally published 1984 Page count 376 Publisher Simon & Schuster | 4.1/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print Paperback ISBN 0-671-50611-0 Genre Creative nonfiction Adaptations Sword of Gideon (1986) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar George Jonas books, Terrorism books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Vengeance is a 1984 book by George Jonas describing part of Operation Wrath of God, the Israeli assassination campaign launched after the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. It was re-released as Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team or Vengeance: Sword of Gideon in some later editions and countries.
The main source of the book is also the main character, Yuval Aviv, known in the book as Avner. A Mossad officer, he is recruited to lead a small team into Europe to assassinate a number of suspected PLO and Black September militants. Each of the book's chapters deals with a separate stage of the mission, including the background to each assassination. Although Jonas claimed to have verified Aviv's story as much as possible, critics, including members of the Israeli Intelligence Community, have called into question story's validity. It has inspired both a 1986 made for television movie called Sword of Gideon and the 2005 Steven Spielberg film Munich.