{"product_id":"raid-on-the-sun-isbn-9780767914253","title":"Raid on the Sun","description":"The first authorized inside account of one of the most daring—and successful—military operations in recent history\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein had vowed to destroy Israel.  So when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-line nuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiably concerned—especially when they discovered that Iraqi scientists had already formulated a secret program to extract weapons-grade plutonium from the reactor, a first critical step in creating an atomic bomb.  The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plant situated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv.  By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming “hot,” and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin knew he would have to confront its deadly potential.  He turned to Israeli Air Force commander General David Ivry to secretly plan a daring surgical strike on the reactor—a never-before-contemplated mission that would prove to be one of the most remarkable military operations of all time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten with the full and exclusive cooperation of the Israeli Air Force high command, General Ivry (ret.), and all of the eight mission pilots (including Ilan Ramon, who become Israel’s first astronaut and perished tragically in the shuttle Columbia disaster), \u003ci\u003eRaid on the Sun\u003c\/i\u003e tells the extraordinary story of how Israel plotted the unthinkable: defying its U.S. and European allies to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear threat.  In the tradition of \u003ci\u003eBlack Hawk Down\u003c\/i\u003e, journalist Rodger Claire re-creates a gripping tale of personal sacrifice and survival, of young pilots who trained in the United States on the then-new, radically sophisticated F-16 fighter bombers, then faced a nearly insurmountable challenge: how to fly the 1,000-plus-kilometer mission to Baghdad and back on one tank of fuel.  He recounts Israeli intelligence’s incredible “black ops” to sabotage construction on the French reactor and eliminate Iraqi nuclear scientists, and he gives the reader a pilot’s-eye view of the action on June 7, 1981, when the planes roared off a runway on the Sinai Peninsula for the first successful destruction of a nuclear reactor in history.Advance Praise for \u003ci\u003eRaid on the Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Rodger Claire handles a complex story with ease and assurance. Infused with an understanding of the pilots and their historical mission, RAID ON THE SUN illustrates how what they achieved for Israel was as vital as that earlier flight of the Enola Gay to Hiroshima to end World War Two. Claire has created a patient, scrupulous story that still unfolds with the pace and verve of a thriller.  Don’t wait for the movie of the book.  Buy it now.” —Gordon Thomas, author of \u003ci\u003eGideon’s Spies: Mossad’s Secret Warriors\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“RAID ON THE SUN is an extraordinary look into the most secret, and perhaps the finest, air force on the planet.  It is also a blistering indictment of the international arms industry that sell modern weapons to anyone with money.  RAID ON THE SUN is required reading for everyone in the age of terror.” —Stephen Coonts, author of \u003ci\u003eFlight of the Intruder\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A stunning eye-opener, shocking you with the realization of the enormous service the Israeli Air Force rendered the free world with its 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facility. Claire went right to the source—the Israeli pilots who flew the mission—to tell in colorful detail the full story of this historic strike.” —Walter Boyne, author of \u003ci\u003eOperation Iraqi Freedom:  What\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eWent Right, What Went Wrong and Why\u003c\/i\u003eRodger W. Claire, a former magazine editor, is the first journalist to have been granted complete access to all of the individuals involved in the raid on Osirak and to classified materials detailing it.  The author of numerous articles and two screenplays, he lives in Los Angeles.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Terror of the Tigris\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePrepare whatever resources and troops you must   to terrorize the enemies of God\u003c\/i\u003e. —the qur'an\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Before the birth of its First Citizen,   the flat, dusty village of Al Auja, just south of Tikrit and a hundred miles north   of nowhere in the Mesopotamian desert, was best known to historians as the site where   the vicious fourteenth-century Tartar chieftain Tamerlane chose to erect his infamous   pyramid of skulls, a towering obelisk of death fashioned from the decapitated heads   of thousands of slaughtered Persian soldiers. In an ironically unconscious homage,   Saddam Hussein, who didn't know Tamerlane from Timbuktu, would one day commission   his own public sculpture in Baghdad featuring two gigantic arms bursting through   the sand brandishing a pair of crossed scimitars that crowned a similar pyramid of   skulls fashioned from the helmets of thousands of slaughtered twentieth-century Persian   soldiers, known now in modern times as Iranians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was into this savagely unforgiving   desert that young Saddam, whose name in Arabic means to \"strike\" or \"punch,\" was   thrust on April 28, 1937, fatherless and penniless, to be reared in a mud-and-straw   house on the kiln-hot banks of the Tigris, without electricity, running water, or   paved roads. Hussein would never forget his Tikriti roots. As though drawing inspiration   from the land itself, he was mesmerized as a village boy by the country's ancient   glory when it sat at the head of the Fertile Crescent, long before Abraham marched   south from Ur in northern Mesopotamia to lay claim to the tribal homeland of the   Semites. Much more than Iraq's later Islamic heritage, divided between the Sunni   sects of the north and Shia of the south, Saddam identified with the country's pre-Arab   Babylonian roots. He revered the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, whose golden   age of prosperity had transformed ancient Baghdad into an intellectual center of   trade and the arts, renowned throughout the Old World for such wonders as its legendary   Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Even more impressive to young Saddam, Nebuchadnezzar   was the last Middle Eastern ruler to conquer the Jews. Following a revolt in Palestine   in 587 b.c., Nebuchadnezzar's army had destroyed Jerusalem, razing the First Temple   and bringing an end to the kingdom of Judea. Thousands of Jews were marched in bondage   back to Mesopotamia in what would become known in Talmudic history as the Babylonian   captivity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hussein loved to recount the historic event to colleagues. And he would   boast that someday he would follow in the footsteps of the legendary king to rule   both the Middle East and Israel. Indeed, years later, after he had assumed regal-like   powers, Hussein would embark on a Baghdad beautification program of public artworks,   broad boulevards, and thousands of transplanted palm trees meant to evoke the great   age of Nebuchadnezzar. Hussein named his sons Udai and Qusai, not names associated   with Mohammed but with pre-Islamic Mesopotamia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Maintaining fantastic dreams was   especially important to young Saddam, who found his own reality nearly unbearable.   Iraq was a tangled nation of tribes and clans and ethnic divisions. Where one was   born and to what clan, or extended family, was extremely important, even in the poorer   classes of Iraqi society. Surnames often derived from the village of one's clan.   Most families could trace their forbears back for generations. Saddam's parents were   not particularly distinguished members of either of their clans. Al Auja and Tikrit   were considered backward, rural villages, and Tikritis of little account. Saddam's   father's clan, the al-Majid, was considered lower caste.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Whether dead or just plain   deadbeat—no one has ever seemed able to say for sure—Saddam's biological father   left his son to be raised by his mother, Sabha, of the Tikriti Talfah clan, and a   series of uncles, including one from his father's al-Majid clan named Ibrahim Hassan,   who, regrettably, was better known to locals as \"Hassan the Liar.\" (Tellingly, Saddam   Hussein ultimately took his name from neither family—Talfah or Hassan.) Ibrahim   eventually married Sabha and, with no trade and plenty of time, amused himself by   beating young Saddam with a stick whenever he was bored, which, unfortunately for   the boy, was often. He grew up mostly alone, forbidden to play with the other villagers,   whom his uncle called \"brigands,\" and who, in return, would taunt him for not having   a \"real\" father. Saddam pined for the day he could escape Tikrit for a better world—a   Mesopotamian world. In the meantime he bided his time, spending most days sitting   by the side of the dirt road at the head of the village next to a fire pit with a   red-hot poker, which he would stab into the stomachs of hapless village dogs that   wandered by. This early cruel streak might have been occasion for worry, but on the   sun-blasted streets of dirt-poor Tikrit it hardly went noticed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Saddam finally caught   a break when, in the fall of 1955, his mother's more prosperous brother, Khairallah   Talfah, an ex-army officer turned hotheaded Arab nationalist and teacher, took Hussein   along with his own son to Baghdad to attend secondary school. Saddam had just turned   eighteen. Baghdad would change him forever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the early 1950s the city was a hotbed   of ethnic and political radicalism. Iraq, which in Arabic means \"the edge,\" was an   amalgam of deeply divided tribes and ethnicities, the remnant of the defunct Ottoman   Empire and Britain's Central Asian empire, which, following World War I, had been   carved up into Iran and Iraq without taking into account traditionally and ethnically   bound territories. Thus, most of southern Iraq, nearly 100 percent Shi'ite, had more   in common with Iran than its Sunni \"brothers\" in the north. In fact, Iranian Shi'ites   still revered two southern Iraqi cities as sacred religious shrines, including Najaf,   the burial place of Mohammed's son-in-law, Al, (and the site of the horrendous terrorist   bombing of its ancient mosque in August 2003). Meanwhile, distrustful of both the   ruling Sunni and the southern Shi'ites were the northern Kurds, who were far closer   in history and culture to the Kurdish tribes across the border in Turkey. By the   1950s Baghdad's tangle of ethnic divisions was further complicated by a slew of competing   political parties, ranging from the Hashemite monarchists (the royal Arab family   that ruled Jordan and whose scion, Prince Faisal, Britain had elected to rule Iraq   in its stead), the right-wing Independence Party, and the centrist Liberal Party   to the leftist People's Party, the Communist Party, and the secretive, socialist   Arab nationalist Ba'th, or \"Renaissance,\" Party.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Despite tutoring by his uncle,   Saddam found it difficult to shed his peasant roots in the class-conscious big city,   especially the crude accent that marked a rural Tikriti as unmistakably as a Cockney   in St. James's Court. He failed to pass the entrance exam to join the prestigious   Baghdad Military Academy. The stigma of outcast propelled Hussein, along with many   of the city's disenchanted youth, toward the young, rebellious, socialist Ba'th Party.   Founded in Damascus by two Syrian intellectuals in the early 1940s, the organization   espoused vaguely pan-Arab nationalist and socialist principles similar to Egyptian   president Gamal Nasser's Arab Legion. But the party's immediate attraction to Baghdad's   frustrated young rebels was its intense hatred of Western colonialism, especially   what it saw as its expansionist guerrilla state—Israel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hussein hagiographies would   later attribute his party association to his newfound belief in Islamic nationalism.   In truth, the impressionable peasant's son was greatly influenced by his uncle Khairallah,   who having been jailed by the British for his part in Baghdad's short-lived pro-Mussolini   revolt in 1941, was the closest thing Saddam had to a hero. Khairallah mentored him   in the tradecraft of Iraqi politicians: manipulation, intrigue, and anti-Semitism.   Not one for mincing words, Khairallah's collective wisdom would later be published   for the benefit of future Ba'thi in his book Three Whom God Should Not Have Created:   Persians, Jews, and Flies.In June 1981, faced with a nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Israel resolved to eliminate a French-built, Baghdad-based reactor producing weapons...","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300607971557,"sku":"NP9780767914253","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780767914253.jpg?v=1767735358","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/raid-on-the-sun-isbn-9780767914253","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}