Whatever the operational efficacy of targeted assassinations may be—or
not be—the conscience of every decent individual should rebel at the
thought that arch-purveyors of terror should be permitted to pursue
their deadly profession with impunity
Dr. Martin Sherman,
11/01/20 19:00 updated: 18:51
www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25022
Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin – attributed to Aesop, Greek fabulist (circa 620 BCE – circa 584 BC).
Last week’s assassination of the commander of the Quds brigades, the
overseas arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) thrust
the topic of targeted killings of high-ranking adversaries dramatically
to the center of international debate—and ignited the dispute over their
use as an instrument of policy, both in terms of their moral
justification and their operational efficacy.
Targeted assassinations: A brief overview
Broadly
defined, “targeted killing” is a form of assassination carried out by
governments against their perceived enemies, typically beyond the
borders of their own countries—either for what they are about to
perpetrate in the future or what they have perpetrated in the past.
Such
targeted killing operations and their underlying rationale span the
divide between the view of terrorism as a crime, on the one hand; and
the view of terrorism as an act of war on the other. In broad brush
strokes, when pursuing a policy of law enforcement, governments are held
to punish persons for their individual guilt that must be proven in a
court of law, where defendants enjoy the protections of due process.
However,
when engaged in war, governments often claim the need to suspend
certain peacetime constraints on the use of deadly force. Accordingly,
enemy combatants may be targeted and killed not because they can be
legally proven to be guilty of a specific offense, but because they are
potentially lethal agents of an enemy entity. No prior warning is
necessary, no attempt to arrest or capture is required.
Targeted
assassinations have been used repeatedly by both Israel and the United
States (as well as other countries) beyond their borders to eliminate
individuals deemed to comprise a threat to the security of the nation or
to the safety of their citizens—or for retribution for inflicting harm
on national security or civilian safety.
T
argeted assassination: Punitive or preemptive?
It
would seem that Israel and the US have employed targeted assassination
both to preempt planned enemy attacks that are about to be carried out
and to punish past ones that have already been committed.
Thus, although he was (unsuccessfully)
pursued by the Clinton administration
as early as 1998, for the US, the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011
was probably far more punitive (for his role in the 9/11 atrocities in
2001), than preemptive—to forestall imminent future attacks by the
founder of al-Qaeda. By contrast, the
targeted assassination of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019 was—despite the ISIS leader’s grisly record of murder and mayhem—largely preemptive. Indeed, author of “
ISIS: A History”, Prof. Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics, who
has followed the organization since its inception,
asserts:
"The killing of al-Baghdadi is a preemptive move that throws ISIS onto
the defensive and complicates its efforts to recover..."
Preemption was also advanced as the motivation for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Thus, a
statement
issued by the Department of Defense, stipulated: “ General Soleimani
was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service
members in Iraq and throughout the region…This strike was aimed at
deterring future Iranian attack plans.”
Punitive or preemptive? (cont.)
Israel, too has engaged in targeted killing across the globe, for motives both preemptive and punitive.
Thus,
in the early 1960s, Israel initiated a campaign of assassination and
intimidation against German scientists, engaged to work on the
development of a rocket project for Nasser’s Egypt. The campaign, named
Operation Damocles, was instrumental in the rocket program being aborted.
Operation
Wrath of God was very different, being launched ostensibly to avenge the
Munich massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics by the
Black September
terror organization and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
However, there are claims that the operation, which was conducted from
of 1972 to 1988, was also intended to deter future terror attacks—by
conveying to potential attackers what their fate would be.
But not only terrorists have been in Israeli sights.
Since
Operation Damocles, Israel has allegedly targeted scientists and
engineers involved in weapons developments for the enemy – whether this
included the manufacture of a “supergun” for Saddam Hussein, the Iranian
nuclear program or the production of drones for Hamas.
The 1988 assassination in Belgium of Canadian engineer,
Gerald Bull, one of the world’s leading artillery experts, who was working with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, on
Project Babylon
to develop a massive “supergun” with a planned range of 750 km., has
been persistently attributed to Israel. The project was never
implemented but some components for the formidable weapon were delivered
to Iraq and others intercepted on route to Iraq.
Between 2010—2012,
several scientists and engineers
working on Iran’s nuclear program were killed, usually by an explosive
device attached to their cars, in incidents ascribed to Israel.
More recently, Israel has reportedly targeted
Mohamed Zouari in Tunis and
Fadi al-Batsh in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who were said to be working on drone development for Hamas and Hezbollah.
Israeli targeted killings: A brief –and abbreviated—review
Since
the 1950s, Israel has engaged in targeted killings of individuals
considered to be (or to have been) an unacceptable menace to its
security or to the lives of its citizens. The following is a brief—and
admittedly arbitrarily abbreviated—list of some of the more noteworthy
cases, generally thought to have been executed (no pun intended) by
Israel.
On July 27, 1979,
Zuheir Mohsein leader of the pro-Syrian
a-Sa'iqa faction of the PLO was shot and killed as he left a casino in Cannes.
On April 16, 1988,
Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad),
Yassir Arafat’s deputy, was assassinated in his home in Tunis by a team
of Israeli commandos (led by Moshe “Bogey” Yaalon, -later
Chief-of-Staff and Defense Minister), which landed from the sea on a
nearby beach.
On February 16, 1992,
Abbas al Moussawi,
co-founder and Secretary General of Hezbollah, was killed by missiles
fired by Israeli helicopters in southern Lebanon. His wife, his
five-year-old son, and four others also died in the attack. Barely a
month later, (March 17,1992), the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was
attacked in retaliation, resulting in the death of almost 30 civilians,
with over 240 injured. Moussawi was swiftly succeeded as
Secretary-General of Hezbollah by
Hassan Nasrallah.
On October 26, 1995,
Fathi Shaqaqi co-founder and Secretary-General of the
Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
(PIJ) was shot and killed in front of his hotel in Malta. He had been
travelling under a false identity to his home in Damascus, on his way
back from Tripoli after visiting then-Libyan leader, the late Muammar
Gaddafi, who promised to help finance Shaqaqi’s organization.
On August 27, 2001,
Abu Ali Mustafa (a.k.a .Mustafa Ali Zibri), the Secretary General of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was killed by an Israeli air strike while he was sitting at his office desk in Ramallah.
Israeli targeted killings: A brief review (cont.)
On March 22, 2004,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
founder of Hamas, and spiritual leader of the organization, was killed
outside a mosque after morning prayers by an Israeli airstrike. The
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release, stating that:
“Yassin, who was the dominant authority of the Hamas leadership, which
was directly involved in planning, orchestrating and launching terror
attacks carried out by the organization… was personally responsible for
numerous murderous terror attacks, resulting in the deaths of many
civilians, both Israeli and foreign…”
On February 12, 2008,
Imad Mughniyeh (Al-Hajj Radwan), number two in
Hezbollah's
leadership, was killed by a car bomb blast in a neighborhood
of Damascus, in what was reported to be a joint CIA-Mossad operation.
Described
as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive", Mughniyeh, who
was on the FBI’s “most wanted terrorist” list, is believed to have been
Hezbollah's Chief of Staff and to have overseen Hezbollah's military,
intelligence, and security apparatus. In 2015, his son Jihad
Mughniyeh, himself a prominent member of Hezbollah, was killed in an
airstrike attributed to Israel that also killed another five
Hezbollah militants, and a general in the Quds Force of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards,
Mohammad Ali Allahdadi.
One of the imponderable questions is that of what would have occurred had targeted assassinations not been undertaken.
On November 14, 2012,
Ahmed al-Jabari ( Abu Mohammad), second-in-command of the Hamas military wing and widely credited as the leader of the
Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, was killed by an Israeli drone strike while driving through Gaza City.
On November 12, 2019,
Baha Abu al-Ata, a prominent leader of Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (PIJ), was killed in a targeted Israeli air strike.
According to the IDF, it carried out the strike on al-Ata as he was planning an “imminent” attack on Israel—at Iran’s behest.
Israeli targeted killings: Assessing the efficacy
How effective have targeted killings been as an instrument of policy for Israel?
There
is no unequivocal answer to this question. Indeed, the record is, at
best, ambivalent. Operation Damocles seems to have contributed to the
termination of Nasser’s attempt to establish domestic rocket production
in Egypt, but it did not prevent Cairo from procuring considerable
missile capability from external sources
including North Korea.
Clearly,
the numerous assassinations of prominent members of Hamas, Hezbollah
and PIJ have not impeded their development, although the elimination of
Shaqaqi in Malta did induce a significant weakening of the organization
for some time. However, PIJ is still active today and continues to carry
out numerous terror operations.
The assassination of
Hezbollah leader, Moussawi, raises particularly challenging questions,
especially in view of the ascendance of his charismatic successor and
the horrendous results of the reprisal attack on the embassy in Buenos
Aires.
Indeed, arguably the only case where a single
targeting killing appears to have brought about the end of a terror
organization is that of Zuheir Mohsen and the a-Saiqa movement which he
headed. Once the second largest faction in the PLO after Fatah, since
the demise of Mohsen, a-Saiqa has descended into insignificance and
irrelevance.
Overall, however, it does appear that, unless
targeted assassinations are part of a sustained, ongoing policy of
lethal pursuit of adversaries, the effect of a “stand alone”
assassination is, at best, short-lived.
The imponderable “What ifs”
Of
course, one of the imponderable questions is that of what would have
occurred had targeted assassinations not been undertaken.
After
all, one thing is certain. If Israel’s enemies know that they are in
danger of losing their lives, their modus operandi will inevitably be
more constrained, cumbersome and costly than if they could operate
unperturbed, secure in the knowledge that their personal safety was not
at risk. With the threat of potential targeted assassination hovering
over them, the resources, that need be devoted to their own security,
may be considerable and hamper the freedom they might otherwise have.
There
is, of course, one other consideration that militates strongly in favor
of targeted assassinations. After all, whatever the operational
efficacy of targeted assassinations may be—or not be—the conscience of
every decent individual should rebel at the thought that arch-purveyors
of terror should be permitted to pursue their deadly vocation with
impunity.
Indeed, as Pulitzer Prize winner, Bret Stephens recently
wrote in the
New York Times:
“No
U.S. president [or Israeli Prime Minister - MS]…should ever convey to
an enemy the impression it can plot attacks against Americans [or
Israelis - MS] with impunity. To do otherwise is to invite worse.”
Indeed it is!!
Martin Sherman is the founder & executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies
