Article in sais review · January 005 doi: 10. 1353/sais. 2005. 0011 citations 49 reads 3,483 authors

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Assassination and Preventive Killing
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SAIS Review · January 2005
DOI: 10.1353/sais.2005.0011
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Asa Kasher
Tel Aviv University
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$VD.DVKHU$PRVSAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 25, Number 1, Winter-Spring
2005, pp. 41-57 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/sais.2005.0011
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41
A
SSASSINATION
AND
P
REVENTIVE
K
ILLING
SAIS Review vol. XXV no. 1 (Winter–Spring 2005)
Asa Kasher is the Laura Schwarz-Kipp professor of professional ethics and philosophy
of practice at Tel Aviv University and an academic advisor of the Israeli Defense Force
(IDF) College of National Defense. Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin is the military attaché of
the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., and former commander of the IDF College
of National Defense. Views expressed in the present paper are those of the authors
and not necessarily those of the IDF College of National Defense, the IDF or the State
of Israel.
41
Assassination and Preventive Killing
Asa Kasher and Amos Yadlin
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that may be played by assassination witihin
the framework of fighting terror. Since the term “assassination” has had various usages
in both professional and public discourses, the first part of the paper will be devoted to an
elucidation of that term. The second part of the paper will briefly outline several prin-
ciples of the military ethics for fighting terror, which are meant to govern acts of targeted
pre-emptive or preventive killing, as developed by a team of the IDF College of National
Defense. In the final part of the paper, we will show that those ethical principles do not
sanction a strategy of assassination but do allow its use as a morally justified tactic under
certain conditions. The conclusion we will reach is that, strictly speaking, unlike preven-
tative killing assassination has not been prevalent in the context of the current conflict
between Israel and Palestinian terror organizations.
1