“Kill the first”: Targeted assassinations, Israel’s double-edged weapon

Photo: Vahid Salemi Associated Press Iranians march through the streets of Tehran in a procession in memory of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 30.

Robbie Corey-Boulet – Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem

Published yesterday at 8:41

• Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that his country had “settled scores” with Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader killed by an Israeli strike in Lebanon, but experts say such targeted assassinations are a double-edged sword.

Far from bringing respite to the Israelis, the first consequence of Nasrallah’s assassination appears to have been the massive missile attack launched Tuesday night by the Islamic Republic of Iran against Israel to avenge its protégé in Lebanon, and an Iranian general killed with him. Israel has vowed to retaliate as the world watches helplessly as the Middle East descends deeper into chaos.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese Islamist movement created in 1982 with Tehran’s help in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, has been rocked by intense Israeli strikes in recent weeks that have decapitated its leadership, starting with its charismatic leader, who was killed Friday in a massive bombing raid on one of its strongholds in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Moussaoui, was also killed by an Israeli raid on his convoy in Lebanon in February 1992. Nasrallah, who was promoted to secretary-general of the “Party of God” after him at the age of 32, used this position to transform himself, in Mr. Netanyahu’s words, “not into just another terrorist,” but to become “THE terrorist.”

In 2008, Imad Moughniyeh, then Hezbollah’s military leader, was killed in a car bombing in Damascus, blamed on Israel. This attack did not “irremediably weaken Hezbollah’s military operations,” believes David Wood, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, “on the contrary.”

Established in 1948, the State of Israel has used targeted assassinations against its enemies since its earliest years, but the practice gained momentum after the hostage-taking at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, where eleven Israeli athletes were killed by a commando of the Palestinian organization Black September.

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“Wrath of God”

In retaliation, Israel carried out an operation called “Wrath of God,” during which the leaders of Black September and leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were killed in Italy, France, and Cyprus.

The policy of targeted assassinations is often explained by a passage from the Talmud, one of the fundamental texts from rabbinical Judaism, quoted by Mr. Netanyahu on Saturday: “Faced with the one who comes to kill you, get up and kill him first.”

It has developed over the decades, with Israeli strikes targeting a number of members or leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as some blunders.

In 1997, an unsuccessful attempt to poison Khaled Meshaal, then leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in Amman led to a deterioration in relations between Israel and Jordan, just a few years after the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries.

Israel was then forced to release the spiritual leader of Hamas, Ahmad Yassin, who had been imprisoned for several years, in exchange for the release of the two Mossad agents (Israeli foreign secret services) arrested by Jordan after their failed operation.

The war that began on October 7th with Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip led to the assassination of leaders of organizations hostile to the Israeli state, including Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31st, and Fouad Chokr, the military leader of Hezbollah, killed the day before in Beirut, before Nasrallah on September 27th.

Israel claimed responsibility for Chokr’s assassination, and is the prime suspect for Haniyeh’s, but has not taken responsibility for it.

“Massive demolition”

In the eyes of John Hannah of the Jewish Institute U.S. National Security Advisor, while Israel has allowed Hezbollah and Hamas to build up threatening arsenals for years, the recent assassinations show that “prevention” has “come roaring back into Israel's national security doctrine,” he says.

The country “is now engaged in a massive demolition of the military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah,” he emphasizes. And this despite the risk of growing tensions with the United States, Israel’s primary ally and military supporter, which has engaged, to no avail, in a series of mediations aimed at obtaining a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.

The Israeli army launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon on Monday against Hezbollah, which opened a front against Israel on October 8, in support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The objective announced by Israel is to “eliminate the threat” weighing on the north of the country and to allow the return home of more than 60,000 Israelis displaced by Hezbollah’s rocket fire.

Yossi Melman, a journalist covering military issues for the left-wing Israeli daily Haaretz, nevertheless believes that Nasrallah's death will only change the situation if it is followed by serious diplomatic efforts to end hostilities.

Otherwise, he told AFP, “Hezbollah, despite the hard blows it has suffered, will continue to target” northern Israel and, in the meantime, the displaced “will not return.”