Raid on the Sun or Racial Paranoia

Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel's Secret Campaign That Denied Saddam the Bomb

Author: Rodger W Clair

The first authorized inside account of one of the most daring—and successful—military operations in recent history.

From 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.

Written 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), Raid on the Sun 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 Black Hawk Down, 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-16fighter 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.

Publishers Weekly

This gripping account of Operation Babylon, the Israelis' 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, is the first to draw on planners' and pilots' own memories. The raid was planned to follow a long campaign of espionage, sabotage and outright assassination by the Mossad, which had failed to prevent the French-built reactor from being about ready to produce weapons-grade plutonium in the summer of 1981. Then the Israeli air force, taking its new F-16s on their first combat mission and one far beyond their designed performance, struck, obliterating the reactor with no losses, few misses and only one civilian casualty. Tactics, technology and weapons are all presented in a clear manner that does not slow the pace. L.A.-based journalist Claire's group portrait of the eight superlatively skilled and trained pilots includes Zeev Raz, the squadron leader and now a general; the ace, Iftach Spector, who missed his target because he suffered a blackout induced by the flu; and Ilan Ramon, who became Israel's first astronaut and was lost on the Columbia. The final result reads like a techno-thriller that is difficult to put down once the mission gets airborne. (On sale Apr. 13) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Lack of good intelligence-gathering sources has plagued the United States for decades-long before the evident disappearance of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction despite the use of all our technology. This was not the case in 1981, when the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq's first nuclear reactor. Iraq had purchased its nuclear reactor from France in 1975 and had scientists at work on extracting plutonium to develop an atomic weapons program. Claire, the first journalist granted access to classified documents and interviews with strike participants, details how the Israeli government obtained high-resolution satellite photographs of the site from the United States, adapted newly acquired F-16 fighters so that they could make the flight without refueling, and secretly trained pilots for the mission. Claire breathes life into this largely forgotten event, and his sensitivity to the human element of the story-especially the ability of the Israelis to obtain human intelligence in planning their response-is striking. Extremely well written, this is highly recommended for all libraries.-Charles M. Minyard, U.S. Army, Blountstown, FL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Weapons of mass destruction? Look for them in the rubble of Iraq's al-Tuwaitha nuclear facility, destroyed by Israeli flyers 23 years ago. After attaining power, writes Los Angeles-based journalist and screenwriter Claire, Saddam Hussein set about making Iraq a nuclear power. But early on, "for all Hussein's obsession with control, it was clear that Iraq had been taken for a ride by the superpowers." The Soviets, for instance, sold Hussein a leaky reactor in the early 1960s, for which the Soviets charged by the ton and layered on all kinds of useless and ancient hardware. Hussein had his revenge: he ordered his scientists to figure out how to develop weapons-grade materials from the reactor, then expelled the Soviets in 1972 and stopped payment. Claire marvels at the ingenuity of those scientists, among them Khidir Hamza, who worried about "his part in enabling Saddam's ambitious plans to become a nuclear state" but still figured that the achievement of building the Arab world's first nuclear weapon would look good on his resume. Enter France, which sold Hussein a better reactor and helped speed the process along. Enter Israel, which had no intention of sharing nuclear-power status with a hostile neighbor; it launched a daring air raid on Iraq that involved crossing over hundreds of miles of desert only a hundred or so feet above the ground. The pilots, among them Israeli's first astronaut, passed directly above Jordanian King Hussein's yacht; fortunately, he didn't pick up the phone to call Baghdad, and the raid went on as planned, destroying the Iraqi nuclear plant with letter-perfect precision and making the French technicians there very glum indeed-as well as displeasing US Secretaryof State Alexander Haig, who called the raid "reckless" and briefly suspended arms sales to Israel. Drawing on interviews with the Israeli pilots involved, Claire's well-paced account is of interest to aerial-warfare buffs, and a useful if minor footnote to the war against Hussein. Agent: David Halpern/Robbins Agency

See also: Funding Evil or On the Fireline

Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness

Author: John L Jackson

A provocative new paradigm of race relations in the twenty-first century, in which the overt racism of the past has been replaced by subconscious suspicions and whispered conspiracy theories.

The Civil War put an end to slavery, and the civil rights movement put an end to legalized segregation. Crimes motivated by racism are punished with particular severity, and Americans are more sensitive than ever about the words they choose when talking about race. And yet America remains divided along the color line.

Acclaimed scholar John L. Jackson, Jr., identifies a new paradigm of race relations that has emerged in the wake of the legal victories of the civil rights era: racial paranoia. We live in an age of racial equality punctuated by galling examples of ongoing discrimination-from the federal government's inadequate efforts to protect the predominantly black population of New Orleans to Michael Richards's outrageous outburst. Not surprisingly, African-Americans distrust the rhetoric of political correctness, and see instead the threat of racism lurking below every white surface.

Conspiracy theories abound and racial reconciliation seems near to impossible. In Racial Paranoia, Jackson explains how this paranoia is cultivated, transferred, and exaggerated; how it shapes our nation and undermines the goal of racial equality; and what can be done to fight it.

Publishers Weekly

Calls for a conversation about race crop up persistently-as in the wake of the Imus scandal or O.J. Simpson's acquittal. Jackson's (Harlemworld; Real Black) examination of how race remains singular in American consciousness proves a lively opening gambit to a thought-provoking analysis. After a loose historical survey of race matters before the 1960s, when "brash and brazen American racism" was mainstream, Jackson focuses on the current state of affairs in racial fears and distrust that have gone underground and express themselves as racial paranoia and "de cardio" racism ("what the law can't touch, what won't be easily proved or disproved, what can't be simply criminalized or deemed unconstitutional"). Racial paranoia, not "just 'a black thing,' " owes much to the way mass media confirms or subverts stereotypes; de cardio racism is cloaked, "papered over with public niceties and politically correct jargon." Jackson explores particularly fresh areas in his illuminating consideration of The Man Who Cried I Amand 1996, racial paranoia's canonical texts and in his attention to the McCarran Act's effect upon black thinkers. Passionate and committed Jackson is, but his content is balanced. Casually scholarly and often witty, Jackson offers the reader "new ways of talking about race's subtler dynamic and new ways of spying racial conflict in the twenty-first century." (Apr.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

Forty years after the heydey of the Civil Rights movement, blacks find themselves in a quandary, unable to deduce who is racist. So asserts Jackson (Communications and Anthropology/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity, 2005, etc.) in a rambling, repetitive text burdened by academic jargon. With lynching (almost) a historical memory and public use of the word "nigger" taboo, racial prejudice is now exhibited in more subtle ways that have given rise to a debilitating paranoia among blacks, he argues. Jackson cites as evidence media reports, publications by other academics and Internet chatter. In a wildly disjointed discussion, he revisits the saga of Dave Chappelle, who in 2005 famously walked away from a purported $50 million contract for his hit television show on Comedy Central. Jackson notes that Chappelle was driven to take a hiatus from his career after a white staffer laughed at a sketch he performed in blackface. The comic could not discern whether the staffer was laughing with or at him-a common conundrum for blacks at a time when political correctness reigns. The author also probes a 2006 conflict involving former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was detained by a white Capitol Hill cop after bypassing a metal detector at her office. Successful blacks like McKinney, who alleged she was a victim of racial profiling, routinely evoke suspicion in halls of power, writes Jackson. He suggests that whites can help blacks conquer racial paranoia-he uses the phrase ten times on a single page-by making friends across racial lines, buying homes in diverse neighborhoods and avoiding predominately white day-care centers. Readers are likely to be stunned byJackson's revelation that some blacks feel they receive less cream cheese on their bagels than whites. A professor's lecture notes run amok. Agent: Andrew Stuart/The Stuart Agency

What People Are Saying

Mark Anthony Neal
"Having an honest conversations about race is as daunting as it was a century ago when W.E.B. DuBois acknowledged the color-line as the defining reality of American culture. Never one to be discouraged by such challenges, John L. Jackson, Jr., once again puts conventional wisdom on its head with a smart, imaginative and humorous conversation about race in contemporary America. With the publication Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, I suspect Jackson will become everybody's favorite public intellectual."--(Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man)

Randall Robinson
"For those who are repeatedly wounded by racism, the prophylactic defense of 'paranoia' may be every bit as involuntary as it is practical. In his insightful new book, John L. Jackson Jr. renders a rigorous and fresh examination of the new axis of race relations in America."--(Randall Robinson, author of An Unbroken Agony: Haiti From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President)

Noah Feldman
"Brutally honest and brilliantly original, Racial Paranoia diagnoses an urgent problem: the suspicion and the reality of racism on the down-low. John Jackson takes us on a stunning whirlwind tour through a landscape peopled by everyone from Frederick Douglass to Dave Chappelle. The picture that emerges is of a new reality where race is everywhere and nowhere, seen and unseen, felt and ignored. Jackson's insight into what he calls the de cardio racism inscribed on American hearts is destined to make this book a classic."--(Noah Feldman, Professor of Law, Harvard University, author of Fall and Rise of the Islamic State)

Henry Louis Gates Jr.
"By listening to conversations about race and studying its endless iterations in popular culture, John L. Jackson, Jr., arrives at a nuanced and utterly convincing reading of how, when we talk about race, we pretend to talk about everything but race, and of how all of us learn to understand what's being said. This important new book will help us decipher and make sense of our national conversation about race."--(Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University)