by Daniel Silva
Signet, 2007
Summary
The Kill Artist, the first book in the Gabriel Allon series authored by #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva, is a literary fictional thriller that tells the story of former Israeli intelligence officer Gabriel Allon and French-Jewish agent Sarah Halevy as they work to neutralize Palestinian terrorist Tariq al-Hourani who is responsible for the murder of Allon’s own son, Dani, and the wounding of Allon’s wife, Leah, in a terrorist attack in Vienna.
Ari Shamron is a legendary former head of the Mossad responsible for the 1960 capture of Adolf Eichmann. After 11 Israeli athletes are murdered at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, Shamron recruits Allon, an Israeli student at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Israel’s national school of art, to help hunt down and kill the Black September terrorists responsible for the murders. Since Allon is the only son of German Holocaust survivors and speaks German as a first language, he can travel around Europe without attracting suspicion. As Shamron says, “Allon is very experienced on the Continent. He knows how to get things done without making a racket.”[1]
Al-Hourani, the son of a village elder from the Upper Galilee, was born and raised in a refugee camp in Southern Lebanon. After his older brother, a member of Black September, is killed, al-Hourani decides to join the PLO to avenge his brother’s death, operating as a member of Yasir Arafat’s personal bodyguard and covert operations unit. In the 1980s, al-Hourani is transferred to the PLO’s intelligence and security apparatus, leading a special unit dedicated to waging war against Israeli secret services and diplomatic personnel. When Arafat decides to enter into negotiations with Israel in the 1990s, al-Hourani parts ways with Arafat, forming a small terrorist group dedicated to destroying the peace process.
After al-Hourani assassinates Israeli Ambassador Zev Eliyahu in Paris, the Israeli Prime Minister signs off on Shamron tasking Allon to take out al-Hourani.
Fiction Informed by History
The author acknowledges his fictional story is informed by historical events associated with the State of Israel. Before the book’s prologue, Silva states:
The Kill Artist is a work of fiction and should be construed as nothing but. All characters, locales, and incidents portrayed in the novel are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. However, in order to add verisimilitude to the story and the characters, I have drawn from real episodes in the secret war between Israeli intelligence and the Palestinian guerillas. For example, the 1988 assassination of PLO commando leader Abu Jihad happened much as it is portrayed, with minor modifications [Italics mine].[2]
Silva skillfully weaves into his story historical information about the State of Israel.
Israel’s 1948 War of Independence
Daoud al-Hourani, Tariq al-Hourani’s father, is said to have fled into Lebanon during Israel’s War of Independence, resulting in what the narrator calls “the Catastrophe”[3]/what Yusef al-Tawfiki[4] and Tariq al-Hourani[5] call “al-Nakba.” Daoud initially expects “that the Arab armies would gather themselves and hurl the Jews into the sea.”[6] When this expected Arab victory fails to materialize and the plight of Palestinians worsens, Daoud concludes, “The Arabs treat us worse than the Jews. The Arabs treat us worse than dogs.”[7]
The 1960 Israeli Capture of Adolf Eichmann
Shamron contributed to the Israeli effort to capture Adolf Eichmann in 1960.[8] Later in the book, Shamron recounts a more detailed version of the account of Eichmann’s capture:
We knew the bastard rode the same bus home every night. All we had to do was grab him as he stepped off. We’d practiced it a hundred times. During the drills[,] I was able to perform the snatch in twelve seconds. But that night, as I climbed out of the car, I tripped. Do you know why I tripped, Gabriel? I tripped because I had forgotten to tie my shoelaces. I got him[,] of course. But I learned a valuable lesson that night. Leave absolutely nothing to chance.[9]
The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre of Israeli Athletes
We learn that both Allon and Halevy are recruited by Shamron to respond to the Black September massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Allon references the Munich massacre and the Israeli operation in response to it in speaking to Shamron: “We killed thirteen members of Black September, and it didn’t bring back one of the boys they slaughtered in Munich.”[10] This book tells us that two members of Shamron’s team accidentally kill a Moroccan waiter who was married to a Norwegian woman due to mistakenly identifying the waiter as “Ali Hassan Salameh, Black September’s chief of operations and the mastermind of the Munich massacre.”[11]
The 1973 Yom Kippur War
Allon references the surprise attack from Egypt and Syria that precipitated the 1973 Yom Kippur War when he tells Shamron, “While we were busy killing the members of Black September, we didn’t notice that the Egyptians and the Syrians were preparing to drive us into the sea. And they nearly succeeded.”[12]
The 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre
An Israeli field agent known as Yusef al-Tawfiki who has infiltrated al-Hourani’s terrorist group adopts the name and assumes the identity of one of the civilians, mostly Palestinian, massacred by Christian phalangists in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut in 1982. Upon learning about the childhood experience of the individual she thinks is al-Tawfiki, Sarah Halevy, assuming the identity of Jacqueline Delacroix for the purposes of the operation, exasperatingly tells Allon, “He was an innocent, Gabriel! He was just a boy!” Allon replies, “We’re in the middle of an operation, Jacqueline. Now is not the time for a debate on moral equivalence and the ethics of counterterrorism.” When Halevy appears to concede to Allon that there are times when violence is warranted, such as targeting a terrorist with “the blood of hundreds of Israelis and Jews on his hands,” Allon tells Halevy, “This one [al-Tawfiki] has blood on his hands[,] too. Don’t forget that.”[13] When Halevy states, “He’s just a boy, a boy whose family was butchered while the Israeli army looked on and did nothing,” Allon responds, “He’s not a boy. He’s a twenty-five-year-old man who helps Tariq kill people.”[14]
First Intifada
The book notes that Yasir Arafat’s “old friend and second in command,” Abu Jihad, “led the war effort in the Occupied Territories” and “helped to organize the [first] intifada”[15] that Jihad “helped to direct from Tunis.”[16] In addition to referencing Arafat’s friendship and collaboration with violent individuals, like Jihad, the book describes Arafat as a “revolutionary”[17] and “the world’s most famous guerrilla,”[18] and realistically portrays Arafat’s antisemitism, with Arafat telling U.S. President James Beckwith: “the Jewish lobby is so powerful.”[19]
Depiction of the State of Israel
Beautiful Atmosphere
The author affectionately describes the atmosphere of Israel in the book.
Israeli Ambassador Eliyahu is said to have “missed Israel, the cacophony of it, the hustle, the scent of pine and dust on the road to Jerusalem, the winter rains over the Galilee.”[20]
Similarly, the narrator tells us, “As he [Allon] waited for daybreak[,] he sifted through the individual scents that combine to create the unique fragrance of Jerusalem: sage and jasmine, honey and coffee, leather and tobacco, cypress and eucalyptus.”[21]
Place of Refuge
A similarly affectionate description of the Jewish State along with its role as a place of refuge for Jews is provided in connection with Halevy and her parents. Halevy is said to have purchased “a small beachfront apartment in Herzliya” as “a retirement present for her parents,” whom she visited “whenever she could get away for a few days.” The text notes, “She fell completely in love with the country. It was the only place she felt truly free and safe. More than anything else, she loved the fact that she did not have to conceal her being Jewish.”[22]
Shamron states, “If there had been an Israel during the Second World War, Maurice and Rachel Halevy might still be alive. It’s my job to ensure the survival of the State so that the next time some madman decides to turn our people into soap, they’ll have a place to take refuge.”[23]
Shamron similarly states,
If our enemies think the Office is weak, then our enemies will test us. They might kill a few Jews whenever they felt like it. The Syrians might come rolling out of those hills again and try to drive us into the sea. Another Hitler might get the idea that he can exterminate my people while the world stands by and does nothing. I may embarrass you from time to time. I may use methods that you find distasteful, but secretly[,] you’re glad I’m here. It helps you sleep at night.[24]
Besieged State
Shamron discusses the threats facing the State of Israel when speaking with Halevy: “As a Jew from Marseilles, you know that our people have many enemies. Many people would like to destroy us, tear down everything we have built in this land […] Over the years[,] Israel has fought many wars with her enemies. At this moment[,] there is no fighting, but Israel is still engaged in another war, a secret war.”[25]
The reader is told, “Israel was a place filled with damaged people—mothers who buried sons killed in war, children who buried siblings killed by terrorists.”[26]
The Palestinian refusal to compromise and accept the legitimacy of the State of Israel in any dimensions is evident when al-Hourani tells Halevy, “I don’t want my people to accept a sliver of our ancestral land just because the Americans and a handful of Israelis are willing to let us have it now. They offer us crumbs that fall from their table. I don’t want the crumbs, Dominique. I want the entire loaf.”[27] When Halevy replies, “Half a loaf is better than nothing,” al-Hourani says, “I respectfully disagree.”[28]
Nuanced Depictions of Israelis
Silva is aware of the prevalence of antisemitism in the world and how much hatred has been directed at the State of Israel. On the author’s website, Silva states: “I felt there was too much antisemitism in the world, and far too much hatred of Israel, to make a continuing Israeli character palatable to a mass audience.”
Given this antisemitism and hatred, the author is to be commended for his decision to continue writing a series featuring a strong Israeli protagonist and nuanced Israeli characters. The author’s depiction of Israelis as multifaceted human beings who hold different opinions stands in marked contrast to the simplistic caricatures of Israelis one finds in books by other fiction authors.
Ari Shamron
Shamron, whose settlement had been looted and whose father had been murdered by Arabs in 1937, is focused on ensuring Israelis and the State of Israel remain secure, believing violent attacks directed against Israelis and the State of Israel must not go unanswered: “I believe that if someone kills one of my people, I should kill him in return.”[29] However, Shamron allows his righteous indignation to lead him to endorse questionable views, as when he tells Allon, “My point is that revenge is good. Revenge is healthy. Revenge is purifying.” Given these views, it makes sense that the book identifies Shamron as “Israel’s avenging angel.”[30] We are told that “Shamron had told him [Allon] to terrorize the terrorists—to think like them and behave like them. Gabriel believed he had been punished for allowing himself to become like his enemy. He had punished himself in return.”[31] Similarly, the narrator later states, “It played out in his [Allon’s] head like an Academy lecture […] Don’t think about the bystanders, think only of the target. Become the terrorist. Cease being the terrorist only when he is dead.”[32]
Gabriel Allon
Allon is described in the book as “a man who had devoted his life to defending Israel from its enemies.”[33] While ultimately willing to carry out his mission, Allon is skeptical that simply killing terrorists will solve Israel’s problems: “Revenge only leads to more killing and more revenge. For every terrorist we kill, there’s another boy waiting to step forward and pick up the stone or the gun. They’re like sharks’ teeth: break one[,] and another will rise in its place.”[34]
Allon seems troubled by the feelings he experiences in killing terrorists, observing, “[Y]ou start to think you’re as bad as the people you’re killing […] When you look into a man’s eyes while pouring lead into his body, it feels more like murder.” While acknowledging, “War always takes a toll on the soldiers,” Shamron does not think Gabriel is guilty of murder: “It’s not murder, Gabriel. It was never murder.”
When Allon and Randall Karp, an audio tech assisting Allon, are aggressively confronted in an alley outside a Kebab Factory in London, Allon subdues the aggressors, but deliberately avoids killing them. The narrator notes that Karp “would never forget the sight: Gabriel Allon, bending over each of his victims, tenderly checking each throat for a pulse, making certain he hadn’t killed them.”[35]
Even after al-Hourani is neutralized, Allon ensures that his body is buried in the Upper Galilee where his family lived before leaving the area during Israel’s War of Independence, according some degree of honor to the dead person despite the terrorist attacks for which he was responsible. Shamron alludes to Allon’s action in this regard in lamenting that Allon, who works professionally as an art restorer, seems to be able to restore others, but not himself:
You’ve spent the last years of your life fixing everything and everyone but yourself. You restore paintings and old sailboats. You restored the Office. You restored Jacqueline [Sarah Halevy] and Julian Isherwood. You even managed to restore Tariq in a strange way—you made certain we buried him in the Upper Galilee. But now[,] it’s time to restore yourself.[36]
Israeli Prime Minister
The Israeli Prime Minister initially expresses skepticism that Shamron has correctly identified al-Hourani as the one responsible for murdering Ambassador Eliyahu, the Prime Minister’s friend, but ultimately, the Prime Minister accedes to Shamron’s request to have al-Hourani taken down after Shamron provides answers to a series of the Prime Minister’s questions and after the Prime Minister concludes: “The people of Israel will never allow me to make peace while Tariq [al-Hourani] or anyone else is running around killing Jews.”[37]
If you are looking for a suspenseful and action-packed fictional story featuring nuanced Israeli characters that grabs your attention and keeps it, pick up this book and give it a read.
–Reviewed by David Orenstein/August 19, 2025
[1] Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist (Signet, 2007), p. 43.
[2] Silva, The Kill Artist.
[3] Ibid. p. 359.
[4] Ibid. p. 246.
[5] Ibid. p. 453.
[6] Ibid. p. 360.
[7] Ibid. p. 361.
[8] Ibid. p. 29.
[9] Ibid. p. 483.
[10] Ibid. p. 92.
[11] Ibid. p. 334.
[12] Ibid. p. 92.
[13] Ibid. p. 303.
[14] Ibid. p. 304.
[15] Ibid. p. 412.
[16] Ibid. p. 150.
[17] Ibid. p. 415.
[18] Ibid. p. 410.
[19] Ibid. p. 415.
[20] Ibid. p. 22.
[21] Ibid. p. 465.
[22] Ibid. p. 176.
[23] Ibid. p. 179.
[24] Ibid. p. 482.
[25] Ibid. pp. 177-178.
[26] Ibid. p. 226.
[27] Ibid. pp. 405-406.
[28] Ibid. p. 406.
[29] Ibid. p. 83.
[30] Ibid. p. 29.
[31] Ibid. p. 227.
[32] Ibid. p. 398.
[33] Ibid. p. 186.
[34] Ibid. p. 84.
[35] Ibid. p. 164.
[36] Ibid. p. 471.
[37] Ibid. p. 42.