World War II narrative spotlights Israeli special forces through short stories

No Mission Is Impossible by Michael bar Zohar is the story of the Israeli special forces and the missions of this group. A relatively new country to the world around World War II, Israel was often hated by many of its neighboring countries. The story illustrates multiple stories from that time in history and how individuals dealt with these problems.

Written in short story form, these true stories highlight a main character in each of  the narratives and do so in a chapter or so length. Each story discusses the raw truth highlighting the controversy, failure and victories from each mission. 

Spotlighted in the book are the more well known stories of the six-day war between Israel and Egypt and its miraculous end. Other missions include hijackings by the terrorist group Black September and rescue raids into Uganda to recover Israeli citizens that had been kidnapped.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others who enjoy historical non-fiction. I enjoyed this format for a book as an entertaining alternative to your normal account of war. With stories written in one chapter, you get the bare facts intertwined with the heart of the story.

This collection of stories held both victories and losses that had a great impact on Israel. While this meant that there was less built-up drama, I still felt like it hooked me and provided well written stories each time. 

A possible challenge for readers is the multitude of important characters. While some stories had overlapping characters, there were still five new important characters each chapter. I think this could be hard for people to manage but by the end of the story, it was easy enough for me to understand what had happened and the reason it was in this book.  

One thing that readers can glean from this book is the hard-driven moral code that each of the individual soldiers that is forced to coexist with their dedication to country and people. Much of this can be related to patriotism in the US, but at the same time it seems that these people have something deeper they believe in and it is quite thought provoking. 

This book is meant for those who enjoy historical non-fiction stories, specifically from World War II. The construction of the story is similar to other non-fiction novels such as “Church of Spies” and “The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945”.

This book can be purchased on Amazon for 13$.

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For other book reviews read: Book Review: The Escape Artists.

Andrew Rieker can be contacted via email.