Long before the United States captured Osama and Saddam Hussein, Israel had been practicing the warfare of targeted assassinations. We wondered at the time why more countries didn’t use this method. While it may remind people too much of cold-blooded murder, it actually minimized civilian casualties and the rampant destruction of infrastructure that war brings. It seems that somewhere along the way the US did pick up on this lesson; of course it would have been better had the lesson been adopted before full-scare war was waged on Afghanistan and Iraq, causing multitude of American and foreign lives.
For anyone who doubts Israel’s capability of targeting the bad guys, watching the video of Al-Jabari’s assassination will take care of those. No collateral damage, one car hit (see still image above right). What really blows the mind is Israel’s intelligence capabilities. In a region where the IDF is not even present, the air force was able to know exactly when and where Al-Jabari was. Wonder who those infiltrators are?
Adam Soclof, JTA’s master archivist, has put together a list of Israel most (in)famous targeted killings prior to Operation Cast Lead, among them Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Do you agree that a targeted assassination is the lesser of two evils?
