Assassination as Statecraft: Israel’s Evolution in Targeted Killings

It took 70 years since Israel’s founding in 1948 for an intrepid journalist to comprehensively detail the Jewish state’s history of targeted assassinations – an indication of just how jealously the Children of Zion guard their secrets.

In his stunning ‘Rise and Kill First’ (2018), investigative journalist Ronen Bergman laid bare for the first time in astounding detail how Israel’s intelligence intelligence community has long relied on targeted assassinations as a central tool of national security and its intelligence services – the Mossad (overseas intelligence), the Shin Bet (internal security) and Aman (military intelligence) - have used extrajudicial killings to eliminate perceived threats.

As electronic devices explode in Lebanon, unnerving the leadership of the militant Hezbollah, one realizes that such operations conducted with surgical precision and secrecy, have long shaped Israel’s defense doctrine and international standing.

The use of assassination as a tool of statecraft is neither unique nor new, but Israel’s scale and mastery of the method stand apart. As Bergman notes, assassination has become embedded in the Israeli defence doctrine, sending a chilling message to its adversaries: if you are a threat, we will find you, wherever you are. This ruthless logic has imbued Israeli intelligence with a fearsome reputation.

To fully understand this reliance on assassination, one must look back at the roots of modern Zionism. Founded in 1896 when Theodor Herzl published ‘Der Judenstaat’ (The Jewish State), Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a safe homeland for Jews in response to pervasive anti-Semitism in Europe.

Herzl was particularly affected by the 1894 Dreyfus Affair in France, where Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was wrongfully convicted of treason, underscoring the vulnerability of Jews in Europe.

Although Herzl’s vision of a Jewish state faced resistance from Western Europe’s Jewish elite, it strongly appealed to oppressed Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, who saw in Zionism a means to achieve self-determination amid ongoing pogroms, particularly in the Tsarist Russian Empire where mobs of the anti-Semitic ‘Black Hundreds’ terrorized Jewish settlements.

This philosophy would later influence the early Jewish defense groups in Palestine, such as the Haganah, which adopted aggressive tactics against Arab forces. An early example occurred in 1923, when a hit squad from Haganah assassinated Tewfik Bey, an Arab police officer implicated in the 1921 Jaffa riots. These early acts of targeted killings, framed as retaliation for attacks on Jewish communities, foreshadowed tactics that would become central to Israel’s defense strategy.

During World War II, the participation of the Jewish Brigade in the British Army would further shape the future Israel state’s military doctrine. Members of the Brigade, upon encountering the horrors of the Holocaust, concluded that Jews could only ensure their survival through the establishment of an independent state. The perceived existential threat to the Jewish people, reinforced by the Holocaust, became a driving force behind the adoption of more extreme measures.

After the war, the experience of the Holocaust intensified Israel’s sense of vulnerability, leading to the belief that Jewish survival required aggressive self-defense. This mindset formalized targeted assassinations as a key tactic, shifting from extremist groups like Irgun and Lehi to mainstream Israeli strategy under leaders like David Ben-Gurion. Many guerrilla fighters and assassins from this era later became pivotal in shaping Israel’s armed forces and intelligence community.

Fast forward to the present, and the legacy of these tactics is unmistakable. During the early 2000s, as violence erupted in the Second Intifada, Israel escalated its campaign against Palestinian militants. The killing of Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, in 2004 marked a pivotal moment in this strategy. The airstrike that took his life was framed as a necessary response to the ongoing threat of terrorism.

Bergman details how Israeli intelligence has perfected the art of assassination, with operations ranging from the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists to thwarting arms shipments destined for Hamas in Gaza. In July 2011, for example, Mossad agents assassinated Darioush Rezaeinejad, a senior researcher for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. In 2011, an explosion at a Revolutionary Guard base west of Tehran, attributed to Israeli intelligence, killed General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, Iran’s missile development chief.

While Israel has honed these methods over decades, the influence of its intelligence operations has extended far beyond its borders. The United States, in its post-9/11 war on terror, adopted many of Israel’s techniques, from intelligence gathering to the use of drones for targeted killings. The same tools used to eliminate threats to Israel now form the backbone of America’s counterterrorism strategy.

One may argue that a paradox of Israel’s intelligence success is that it has become a victim of its own capabilities. Leaders who have seen the efficacy of assassinations in neutralizing immediate threats have, at times, elevated these tactics above the pursuit of comprehensive peace agreements. Meir Dagan, former Mossad chief, came to realize this late in his career.

He argued that only a two-state solution with the Palestinians could ensure Israel’s long-term survival. Without such a political solution, Israel risks becoming a binational state, where the Zionist dream of a Jewish-majority democracy is fraught with constant internal conflict.

Today, as Hezbollah retaliates to the pager explosions with rocket strikes in Nazareth, one wonders whether Israel’s over-reliance on assassination has sidelined broader political solutions needed to achieve lasting peace.