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Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1658
Legalizing Targeted Killings
(Israel Hayom) Dore Gold - Israel has absorbed incessant criticism for its policy of targeted killings against the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations. Yet on March 5 at Northwestern University School of Law, U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder announced: "It is entirely lawful...to target specific senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda and associated forces." Holder rejected calling these operations "assassinations." He said, "They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced," because assassinations were "unlawful killings." The terrorist masterminds that were being targeted were combatants, plain and simple. The war on terrorism was not a police action, in which terrorists were to be arrested and read their rights. Targeted killings using drones increased dramatically in George W. Bush's last year in office and especially during Barack Obama's presidency. After U.S. forces eliminated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, Professor Alan Dershowitz noted that all the states ganging up on Israel for killing Hamas leaders were now silent about the case of Bin Laden. This was a case of global hypocrisy. The NATO allies in Afghanistan were benefiting from targeted killings by U.S. forces against the Taliban. The Russian parliament adopted a law in 2006 permitting Russian security services, with the approval of the president, to kill alleged terrorists overseas. Belatedly, the major powers are validating the same Israeli strategy against terrorism that they had universally condemned a little more than a decade ago.