In this aspect, Israel is one of the most active countries in targeted killings which have resulted in significant victories against their enemies but only for a short time: the killings of Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi and Sheik Ahmed Yassin in 2004 or Yusuf al-Najjar in 1973 have not destroyed the significant of neither Hamas or Fatah -- to enumerate just three of the many targeted killings.
In the case of Osama bin Laden, his killing has obviously weakened the organizational structure and chain of command of al Qaeda. Together with the elimination of other leaders it has created severe fractures in the power of the terrorist activities, but, in the same time, has created a large number of martyrs, which help these type of organizations to gather more and more followers.
Various question appear therefore regarding targeted killings from an international law perspective, as well as one from a morality point-of-view. Real politik or power politics argues that the strongest dictates the rules of the game and therefore he is not subject to any regulations. It is a relation based on power rather than morality or ideology and comes close to realism and pragmatism. Therefore, a state like the United States or Israel will look away from the ethical perspective of international law and attain its objectives by using the force it has at its disposal. Moving away from an internationalist approach which goes towards a multilateral development of the world in which states agree to follow certain rules, countries like the ones aforementioned follow a realpolitik track and use their power to reach certain objectives. As Nils Melzer shows in his "Targeted Killing in International Law," State-sponsored or State-directed killing...
Yet, as many authors point out as well, Melzer does admit that there are a number of cases in military warfare where, under a microscopic understanding, these could be acceptable. By using two paradigms, law enforcement and the hostilities one, Melzer points out that no individual should be eliminated without further considerations unless he or she is a legitimate military target (Melzer, 2009). Yet, one of the questions that Melzer does not fully answer is what is a legitimate military target. In the case of Osama bin Laden, it appears that he was a legitimate target, yet in the case of many other targets that Israel, the UK or the U.S. have had, such a moral legitimization was replaced by a realpolitik one. Self-legitimacy is often the manner in which states in modern times engage in killing targets. In a more personal analysis to be found in one of the May editions of the Economist, one author argues that countries which use realpolitik to create morality over their amoral target killings will further punish any country which seeks to "seek retribution through the targeted killing of one of these countries' leaders (and it) will terrorism, that will be an international crime" (W.W. 2011).
Bibliography
Lonsdale, David. The Nature of War in the Information Age. Routlege, 2004
Hunter, Thomas. Targeted Killing: Self-Defense, Preemption, and the War on Terrorism. BookSurge Publishing; 1st edition. 2009
Melzer, Nils. Targeted Killing in International Law. Oxford University Press. 2009
W.W. "The ethics of realpolitik and assassination," The Economist, May 4, 2011.
