“Ami Ayalon is a retired Israeli warrior with much more history than he needs to fill this compact, compelling memoir. Three years older than the state of Israel, he spent the first two-thirds of his life fighting Arabs, first as a member of Shayetet 13, the Israeli equivalent of the Navy Seals, then as commander of the Israeli navy and finally as head of Shin Bet, the internal security service, its motto: “Defender that shall not be seen.”

Under the subtitle How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy and Its Hope for the Future, Ayalon has produced a book smoothly written with the assistance of Anthony David, an American academic. The early chapters are punctuated by accounts of extraordinary feats of battlefield bravery which earned Ayalon the Medal of Valor, Israel’s highest military honor.”—“Friendly Fire review: Israeli warrior Ami Ayalon makes his plea for peace,” The Guardian

“Ami Ayalon’s Friendly Fire is a book that sits uneasily between two narratives. In one, Ayalon, a former director of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, repeats the story that Israel tells the world: that the failure to achieve peace in the region is due to Palestinian terrorism and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence. In the other, he offers a personal account of how his understanding of that story—and of the Palestinians themselves—has changed drastically over time.

In telling the first story, Ayalon gives the impression that all would have been well if only the Palestinians hadn’t refused to come to terms with the Jewish state. But what makes Friendly Fire a unique contribution to understanding what is taking place in contemporary Israel, and what needs to be done to achieve peace, is its author’s audacity and readiness to confront the myopia of this narrative and consider its shortcomings. — Friendly fire Review: “The Two Narratives. Ami Ayalon’s political journey.” Raja Shehadeh, The Nation