ABC Mini-Encyclopedia

Targeted Killings

Dear Editor,
Sub: Challenging Your article "Israel's Assassination Tactics"


According to an old Hebrew saying 'He who is forgiving to cruel ones becomes
cruel to the victims'

Your criticism of Israel's policy of targeted killings misses a vital point. Israel is fighting terrorism and terrorists do not adhere to the rules of war. Terrorists do not identify themselves as combatants, they hide their weapons and they deliberately target civilians. To demand adherence to the Geneva conventions from Israel towards Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who are disguising themselves as civilians and deliberately blow up Israelis praying or women and babies on buses, is the height of hypocrisy, and, to put it mildly, is also impractical. Once a terrorist has struck it is too late - the only option is to prevent the attack before it happens.

Today the problem of fighting terrorism is not Israel's alone but truly global, from New York to Bali, from Algeria to any other place. A new international consensus is to be urgently formed recognizing the new nature of a the terrorist war being waged worldwide, mostly by radical Islam. Unless such consensus is built and vigorously applied, it is only a matter
of time before Western democracies will have to cope with the same dilemma as Israel: how to fight against a ruthless enemy whose aim is to kill as many civilians as possible, without any compunction about transgressing all the rules of war and also all accepted norms of civilized behavior?

Back to that old saying, Israel and all must be harsh on terrorist murderers, if we don't want to abandon more and more victims to their fate.