Nations waging war with targeted killings

For the last century and a half the killing of prominent or targeted individuals has been a staple in European history. Northwestern University historians Jones and Olken report that from 1875 to 2004 some 300 assassination attempts on national leaders around the world were successful 59 times.

The assassination of a minor political figure in 1914 prompted trigger-happy European armchair war-mongers into starting the disastrous World War Two. So incredibly, here we are again a century later with trigger-happy armchair war-mongers launching a major international diplomatic conflict, this time over the attempted assassination, perpetrator unknown, of an unimportant retired double agent.

During the half century after World War Two, South American military regimes and the South African apartheid government introduced routine assassination of their deemed enemies in other countries. Thus began the new era of national policy of war by assassination without actually declaring it or sending armies across borders, and imaginative excuses manufactured to justify the violation of international law.

Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman described how Israel showed the way in assassinating deemed enemies abroad. In response to targeted murder of Israelies in Europe including the 11 Munich Olympians in 1972, the Israeli security service Mossad was tuned loose. Some 2,700 deemed Palestinian enemies of Israel have been targeted for assassination in Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and the occupied West Bank and Gaza. These “targeted preventions” were by snipers, booby-traps, helicopters, fighter jets, and, most recently, by armed drones.

After the 2001 Twin Towers attack, the U.S., British and French governments followed the Israeli example in tracking down and assassinating deemed enemies abroad in “areas of active hostilities” claimed to be beyond the reach of international law. Obama emerged as the champion of drone assassinations, approving them in other countries that are either unable or unwilling themselves.

Unlike assassinations of earlier times with only a single kill plus perhaps once in a while an unlucky bystander, current assassinations by powerful high-tech modern weapons, often from a distance, routinely yield multiple victims. For example, Amnesty International has reported that a bomb dropped on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh also killed 16 civilians including nine children.

Owen Holmes

Lethbridge