Skulduggery?, ctd

Alan Dershowitz provides a thoughtful analysis of the legal issues involved in the case of the Hamas leader who appears to have been executed by a team of Israeli commandos. The bottom line is this:

The Goldstone report suggests that Israel cannot lawfully fight Hamas rockets by wholesale air attacks. Richard Goldstone, in his interviews, has suggested that Israel should protect itself from these unlawful attacks by more proportionate retail measures, such as commando raids and targeted killing of terrorists engaged in the firing of rockets. Well, there could be no better example of a proportionate, retail and focused attack on a combatant who was deeply involved in the rocket attacks on Israel, than the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Not only was Mabhouh the commander in charge of Hamas’ unlawful military actions at the time of his death, he was also personally responsible for the kidnapping and coldblooded murder of two Israeli soldiers several years earlier.

Obviously it would have been better if he could have been captured and subjected to judicial justice. But it was impossible to capture him, especially when he was in Dubai. If Israel was responsible for the killing, it had only two options: to let him go on his way and continue to endanger Israeli civilian lives by transferring unlawful anti-personnel weapons from Iran to Gaza, or to kill him. There was no third alternative. Given those two options, killing seems like the least tragic choice available.

That seems pretty much on point to me. I still fail to see why any reasonable person would get too upset by the actions of the Israelis (assuming it was the Israelis) in this effort. Let’s say you’re a high-ranking government official. You have a senior leader of a terrorist organization who is actively engaging in the procurement of weapons that are being purchased with the intent of killing your civilians in your sights. Wouldn’t you be engaging in malpractice if you didn’t have that person killed? What if he succeeded in procuring those rockets and one of those rockets landed on a school. Wouldn’t the death of each and every one of those children rest on your shoulders?

Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. Its leaders plot the murder of innocent civilians as a means of terrorizing the state into giving it what it wants. I refuse to shed any tears when Israel does to its enemies first what its enemies are trying to do to it.