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

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be eliminated? In the present context, this is a misleading question. An ac-
tivity of pre-emptive or preventive killing is meant, first and foremost, to
solve the problem of ongoing processes of jeopardizing the life of citizens
of Israel. The purpose of eliminating terror in general is another one. The
state owes its citizens a pursuit of both eliminating certain terror dangers
and eliminating terror in general, but there is no reason to assume that suc-
cess in pursuing the short-range problem determines in either way the ex-
tent to which we are brought closer to success in pursuing the long-range
problem as well.
32
Our conclusion is that assassination, as has been analyzed in the
present paper, has not been prevalent and probably has not played a ma-
jor role in the current conflict between Israel and Palestinians terror orga-
nizations. To the extent that certain acts of preventive killing performed
by Israel were acts of assassination, they were acts of self-defense and jus-
tified on moral, ethical and legal grounds.
Notes
1
To be sure, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin did play a role in the same
context, but its discussion is beyond the confines of the present paper, which is devoted
to acts of killing where the agent and the victim belong to different parties of the conflict
between Israeli and Palestinian terrorist organizations and not to the same one.
2
Emphasis added. See .
3
Matthew S. Pape, “Can We Put the Leaders of the ‘Axis of Evil’ in the Crosshairs?”
Parameters 32, no. 3 (2002) 62–71. Emphasis added.
4
Murry C. Havens, et al., The Politics of Assassination. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970).
Emphasis added.
5
Robert A.Rowlette Jr., “Assassination is Justifiable under the Law of Armed Conflict,”
.
6
W. Hays Parks, for example, claims that “in general, assassination involves murder of a
targeted individual for political purposes.” W. Hays Parks, Memorandum on Executive Order
12333 and Assassination, Office of the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army, 1989.
7
Kevin A. O’Brien, “The Use of Assassination as a Tool of State Policy: South Africa’s
Counter-Revolutionary Strategy 1979–1992,” Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no. 3 (1998)
34–51.
8
The religious motive is mentioned in the Canadian Forces manual on the law of armed
conflict.
9
For a discussion of this ingredient, see Patricia Zengel, “Assassination and the Law of
Armed Conflict,” Military Law Review 134 (1991) 123–156, section B2.
10
The distinction between the terms of this ingredient is between national affiliation and
means of operation.
11
Hugh Beach and David Fisher, “Terrorism, Assassination and International Justice’,
International Security Policy Paper, no. 80, 2001, define the term “assassination” in terms of
“an important person.”
12
We assume it has not been recently changed by President George Bush. For a discussion
of related possibilities, see Boyd M. Johnson III, “Executive Order 12333: The Permissibility
of an American Assassination of a Foreign Leader,” Cornell International Law Journal 25
(1992) 401–436.
13
For the stories of all the attempts to assassinate Hitler, which failed, see: Annedore Leber,
in cooperation with Willy Brandt and Karl D. Bracher, re-edited by Bracher (Mainz: v. Hase
& Koehler, 1984). English translation, Mainz: v. Hase & Koehler, 1994.
14
For a fully fledged presentation and defense of the principles, see Asa Kasher and Amos
Yadlin, “The Military Ethics of Fighting Terror: An Israeli Perspective,” Journal of Military

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Ethics 4 (2005), in press. A file of the paper is available from the first author.
15
“[T]he first obligation of the state is to protect the lives of its citizens (that’s what states
are for) . . . ” Michael Walzer, 2002, “After 9/11: Five Questions about Terrorism”
republished in Michael Walzer, Arguing about War (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2004) 130–142, 139.
16
See Paul Christopher, The Ethics of War and Peace, An Introduction to Legal and Moral Issues
(Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1999) for a discussion of some problematic
analyses of the notion.
17
Paul Gilbert, New Terror, New Wars (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003),
mentioned in passing.
18
In our example, the checkpoint is at the entrance to Israel. However, similar
considerations apply to a checkpoint that is within belligerently occupied territories, in
case it is a military necessity to have it as means against expected terrorist action or activity.
19
For lack of space we do not present these principles in the present paper. For a full
presentation and defense, see Kasher and Yadlin, ibid., principles (B.3) and (B.4).
20
The principle, as presented in Kasher and Yadlin, ibid., has a section about a
presumption of direct involvement in terror, but for lack of space we do not present it
here.
21
The present proviso implies that the state should not force persons who are not directly
involved in terror to participate in its military acts or activities in a way that jeopardizes
them, e.g. as human shields of combatants. However, requesting the support of such
persons which does not jeopardize them at all is morally permissible, e.g. when they are
in a position to convince a relative to surrender rather than be killed.
22
For discussions of the distinction from different perspectives, see Anthony Hartle,
“Discrimination,” in Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion, eds., Moral Constraints on War
(Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002) 141–158, and Oliver O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 32–47.
23
Some parameters of involvement in terror are specified in our Principle of Military
Proportionality. See Kasher and Yadlin, ibid., principle (B.3), for the details and their
defense.
24
We take direct involvement in acts or activities of terror to be grounds of moral
responsibility to acts or activities of terror. On this point, see also Jeff McMahan, “The
Ethics of Killing in War,” Ethics 114 (2004) 693–733, section VIII.
25
Notice that when combatants are not under combat the related package of the state
duty to minimize casualties among them is heavier than the package of the state duty to
minimize casualties among combatants under combat.
26
Notice that since the decision to carry out such an act must rest on intricate
considerations, there has to be an appropriate procedure that involves careful evaluation
of intelligence and deliberation of possible means and expected results. Naturally, such a
procedure involves steps of a high level approval of such an act before it is carried out.
27
Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (New York: Dover, [1907] 1966) 246.
28
Condition (2) implies that the state is not responsible for terrorists and other persons
being in the vicinity of each other. For a discussing of the pertinent question ‘who put
them at risk,’ see Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, A Moral Argument with Historical