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Israel Is Allowed to Target Hamas Terrorists; International Law Is Not a Suicide Pact
A home destroyed in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack that is featured in the film Kibbutz Nir Oz by “Uvda.” Photo: Screenshot
“Each state is expected to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon the offenses against that universal law.” William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England (1765)
Israel’s targeted killing of Hamas leader Marwan Issa in mid-March raises tactical and legal questions. Though it is unclear that such tactics can diminish tangible terror threats to Israel, there is also no reason to rule out their permissibility under international law. In the final analysis, such permissibility derives from the world legal system’s continuously anarchic structure and from the corresponding right of all nation-states states to protect their citizens from willful slaughter.
There are many clarifying details. By definition, world legal authority remains a fundamentally “self-help,” or vigilante system of justice. It is amid this perpetual global anarchy that every anti-terror government must systematically assess its strategic and tactical options. The victim of this necessary act (a targeted air attack) was a key Hamas planner of the October 7, 2024, assault on Israeli civilians, a murderous terror assault that combined the mass killing of noncombatants with the orchestrated rape of Israeli civilians.
Hamas, like Hezbollah, draws tangible support from Iran. A principal risk of leaving this insidious symbiosis unchallenged would be a direct Iranian attack on Israel that escalates incrementally into unconventional belligerency. Eventually, even if Iran were to remain non-nuclear, an intra-crisis search for “escalation dominance” by Israel and Iran could produce unprecedented nuclear conflict. This sui generis result could be produced suddenly, as a “bolt-from-the-blue,” or in variously hard to decipher increments. Initially, it could “present” as an Iranian use of radiation dispersal weapons (nuclear radiation rather than nuclear explosives), or as a conventional attack on Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona.
Under international law, which is binding upon all sovereign states, terrorism represents a crime that should be prevented and must be punished. As was learned originally from Roman law and Jewish law (Torah), a universal rule exists. This “peremptory” rule affirms the core principle of “No crime without a punishment,” or Nullum crimen sine poena. It can be discovered, among other sources, at the London Charter of August 8, 1945. This is the founding document of the post-war Nuremberg Tribunal.
In formal jurisprudence, terrorists are known as hostes humani generis, or “common enemies of humankind.” While the world legal system allows or even encourages certain insurgencies in matters of “self-determination,” there is nothing about these matters that can ever justify deliberate attacks on civilians. In this connection, it is important to remember that an integral part of all criminal law is the underlying presence of mens rea, or “criminal intent.”
On this point, there can be no reasonable comparison of Marwan Issa’s deliberate mass murder of Israeli noncombatants, and the unintended civilian harms now being suffered in Gaza. As a matter of law, responsibility for such ongoing harms falls entirely upon the “perfidious” behavior (i.e., “human shields”) of Hamas and Iran, and not on Israeli forces acting on behalf of legitimate self-defense.
Under the law of war, even where an insurgent use of force has supportable “just cause,” it must still fight with “just means.” Accordingly, the vapid phrase “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter,” is never more than an empty witticism.
There is more. Ordinarily, assassination, like terrorism, is a crime under international law. Under certain conditions, however, the targeted killing of terrorist leaders can represent a life-saving and heroic example of indispensable law-enforcement. In a more perfect world legal system, perhaps, there could be no defensible justification for any violent self-help expressions of international justice. But this is not yet such a world.
In our self-defense oriented world legal order, the only state alternative to launching precise targeting actions against terrorists would be to allow incessantly escalating terror-violence against the innocent. Among pertinent clarifications, this is because terror-organizations like Hamas and terror-mentoring states like Iran harbor undisguised contempt for all ordinary legal expectations of criminal extradition. The formal term for this ignored expectation is “extradite or prosecute;” or aut dedere, aut judicare.
At first glance, to accept the targeted killings of terrorist leaders as law-enforcing remediation would seem to disregard the usual obligations of “due process.” Still, international relations are not overseen by the same civil protections offered by individual national governments, and terrorist leaders like Marwan Issa undertake barbarous attacks on men, women, and children with undisguised enthusiasm.
In the future, if Hamas and related terrorist criminals are effectively held immune by civilized states, indiscriminate attacks could exploit chemical, biological, or even nuclear elements. For the moment, a nuclear option would be limited to “only” a “dirty bomb” (radiation dispersal weapons), but this could change. To be sure, in the foreseeable future, Iran could fashion and deploy an authentic “chain-reaction” nuclear explosive.
There is more. The willfully indiscriminate nature of jihadist terrorist operations (not just Hamas) is well documented. Such intentional blurring of the lines between lawful and unlawful targets is rooted in certain generic principles of “holy war.” Several years ago, an oft-repeated remark by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, then a prominent Muslim cleric in London, explained core doctrinal linkages between Islamic terror and “holy war:”
Said the Sheikh, “We don’t make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever (a Jew or Christian) has no value. It has no sanctity.”
International law is not a suicide pact, especially when an adversary remains indifferent to its unassailable claims.
As was learned yet again on October 7, 2023, jihadist attackers add gratuitously barbarous effects to their corrosive primal ideologies. At “bottom line,” these are belief systems that gleefully embrace the sacrificial slaughter of “unbelievers.” To wit, for Hamas and related terror groups, “military objectives” have “normally” included elementary schools, bomb shelters, ice-cream parlors, civilian bus stops, and elderly pedestrians. In law, these perpetrators ought never to be called “militants.” Whatever their alleged cause, they are criminals of the irredeemably worst sort.
There is a related point. Though jihadists may call themselves “martyrs,” the personal death such terrorists seem anxious to suffer is presumptively just a transient inconvenience on the path to “paradise” and immortality. As this path is “glorious,” these jihadists are not “merely” aspiring mass murderers. They are also consummate cowards.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other terror groups remain dedicated to the idea that any peace agreement with Israel must represent an intolerable abomination to Islam. Facing these implacable enemies within a self-help system of international law, Israel deserves the self-defending right to target refractory terrorist leaders. Determining whether such self-help remedies are also militarily sound raises another question altogether.
In the final analysis, what is most noteworthy about the targeted killing of terrorist leaders is not its permissibility in law, but the widespread global unwillingness to endorse or even acknowledge this critical right.
In current jurisprudence, an ancient principle still holds true: Ubi cessat remedium ordinarium, ibi decurritur ad extraordinarium — “Where the ordinary remedy fails, recourse must be had to an extraordinary one.”
Under international law, every state maintains the inherent right and corollary obligation to protect its citizens from transnational criminal harms. In exceptional circumstances, this dual responsibility can extend to the targeted killing of terrorist leaders. Otherwise, on its face, world law would in fact be a suicide pact.
Targeted killings, subject to applicable legal rules of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, could sometimes offer the least unwelcome form of national self-protection. In such cases, especially where additional terror-crimes are still in a planning stage, the legal acceptability of violent self-help measures is greater ipso facto. In our continuously anarchic system of international law, this proposition is beyond any logical doubt. The world legal system is designed to protect us all from foreseeable infringements of human rights. Ironically, however, this same decentralized system still has no independent means to meet such a primary obligation.
In the best of all possible worlds, targeted killing could expect no defensible place in law-based counter-terrorism. But we do not yet live in the best of all possible worlds, and the negative aspects of any such action ought never to be evaluated apart from alternative policy outcomes. If Israel had chosen not to target Marwan Issa so as not to injure the sensibilities of “civilized nations” (a phrase codified at article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice), it would have brought extensive injury to many innocent human beings.
Counter-terrorism should always be governed by rational and justice-oriented decision-making processes. If the expected costs of a targeted assassination appear lower than the expected costs of all other plausible self-defense options, such a self-defense operation must emerge as the patently rational choice. However odious it might first appear in vacuo, targeted killing in such circumstances could offer a beleaguered state the least injurious path to security from terrorist criminality.
Inevitably, targeted killings, even of Hamas leaders like Marwan Issa, will elicit righteous indignation from many quarters. For now, however, the philosophic promise of centralized international law remains far from being realized, and continuously beleaguered states such as Israel will need to consider multiple operational choices. In facing such bewildering choices, states would soon discover that all viable alternatives to targeted-killing also include violence, and that these alternatives could plausibly exact a much larger human toll.
Sir William Blackstone’s 18th century Commentaries, the foundation of United States jurisprudence, explain that because international law is an integral part of each individual state’s “common law,” all states are “expected to aid and enforce the law of nations.” This must be accomplished “by inflicting an adequate punishment upon the offenses against that universal law.” Derivatively, by its precisely targeted removal of Hamas terrorist leader Marwan Issa, Israel acted not in violation of the law of nations, but in its indispensable enforcement. Presently, this neglected clarification of global justice should not be undervalued or overlooked.
Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Professor Beres was Chair of Project Daniel. His twelfth and latest book is titled Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018). A version of this article was originally published by Israel National News.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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