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Israel’s Targeting of Hamas Commander Marwan Issa Was a Legal Operation
Palestinian fighters from the armed wing of Hamas take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip, July 19, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Under authoritative international rules, Israel’s mid-March targeting of senior Hamas commander Marwan Issa was law-enforcing. Among other egregious crimes, Issa was a key planner of the October 7 rampage against Israeli civilians. Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, accurately described this Palestinian terrorist leader as Hamas’s “strategic mind.” To fully understand this law-based action, geopolitical context is necessary. In essence, the world legal structure compels a vigilante system of justice. It is against the background of continuing global anarchy that terror-beleaguered states must identify and operationally shape their counter-terrorism options.
Responding to intentionally indiscriminate, grand-scale Hamas violence, Israel’s terrorist-removing airstrike in March was an authentic act of law enforcement, one that precisely targeted Hamas commander Marwan Issa while he cowered in an underground Gaza compound. Faced with the persistent threat of Palestinian terrorism — a threat that could eventually escalate to include weapons of mass destruction — Israel has no reasonable choice but to eliminate Hamas leadership wherever deemed possible and cost-effective. This means a periodic resort to the targeting of terror-criminals.
Abandoning such a primary obligation would express more than an existential threat to Israel itself. It would also represent a potentially devastating threat to regional and even global security. An overriding example of such threat would be a direct Iranian attack on Israel that escalates into unconventional or nuclear war. Though Iran is pre-nuclear, any accelerating search for “escalation dominance” by Israel and Iran could still produce a nuclear conflict. This is because Iran already has access to radiation dispersal weapons and can already launch a conventional attack on Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.
Under binding international law, terrorism represents a crime that must be prevented and punished. As we may learn from both Roman and Jewish law (Torah), a “higher law” obtains. This core rule affirms the immutable principle of “No crime without a punishment.” It can be found, among other valid sources, in the London Charter of August 8, 1945, the founding document of the historic Nuremberg Tribunal.
In law, terrorists are known as hostes humani generis or “common enemies of humankind.” While the world legal system allows certain insurgencies in matters of self-determination, there is nothing about such 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 question 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 civilian harms now being suffered in Gaza. As an unambiguous matter of humanitarian international law, responsibility for all these harms falls entirely upon the “perfidious” behavior (i.e., use of “human shields”) of Hamas and Iran. It does not fall on Israeli forces acting to support legitimate and indispensable rights of national self-defense.
Under the binding laws of war, even where an insurgent use of force has “just cause,” it must still wage its fight with “just means.” The phrase “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” is never more than an empty witticism. Jurisprudentially, this comparison contradicts the law.
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 necessary law enforcement. In our self-defense-oriented world legal system, the only alternative to states launching precise targeting actions against terrorists would be to allow incessant terror-violence against the innocent. This is because terror-organizations like Hamas and terror-mentoring states like Iran display undisguised contempt for all ordinary criminal law expectations of extradition. The formal term for this openly ignored expectation is “extradite or prosecute” or (for the lawyers) 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.” But international legal relations are not overseen by the same civil protections offered by individual national governments, and terrorist leaders like Marwan Issa orchestrate unspeakably brutal attacks on men, women and children with manifest enthusiasm. On October 7, 2023, Hamas attackers perpetrated the rape-mutilation of males as well as females, of children as well as adults. Let no one forget the details. This assault was not about Palestinian “sovereignty,” “national self-determination” or “statehood.” It was an expression of the visceral “joys” of pure barbarism.
If Hamas and related groups are held immune for their crimes by civilized states, terror attacks could escalate to 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 can change. In the foreseeable future, Iran could fashion and deploy an authentic chain-reaction nuclear explosive. In short order, such actions could spawn joint Iran-Hamas crimes against peace, crimes of war, and crimes against humanity.
The willfully indiscriminate nature of jihadist terrorist operations (not just Hamas) is well documented. The intentional blurring of lines between lawful and unlawful targets is rooted in certain generic principles of “holy war.” Several years ago, a recorded remark by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, then a prominent Muslim cleric in London, explained 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.”
As was learned yet again on October 7, 2023, jihadist attackers include gratuitous murder in their primal or pre-civilizational ideologies. The bottom line is that jihadist belief systems embrace the sacrificial slaughter of “unbelievers.” For Hamas and related terror groups, “military objectives” normally include 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 “just cause,” they always display criminal intent or mens rea.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups remain dedicated to the primal idea that any peace agreement with Israel would represent an intolerable abomination to Islam. Facing these implacable enemies within the system of international law, Israel is entitled to the self-defending right to target terrorist leaders. Determining whether such remedies are militarily sound raises another question altogether.
In the final analysis, what is most noteworthy about the targeted killing of terrorist leaders like Marwan Issa is not its permissibility in law but its widespread unacceptability. Why is there a near-global unwillingness to endorse or merely acknowledge this established right?
International law is not a suicide pact. In current jurisprudence, an ancient principle still holds true: Ubi cessat remedium ordinarium, ibi decurritur ad extraordinarium, or “Where the ordinary remedy fails, recourse must be had to an extraordinary one.” It would be best, of course, if Israel didn’t have to resort to the targeted killing of terrorist adversaries, but in the present system of world law, this beleaguered country – which is smaller than Lake Michigan – has no choice.
Under international law, every state maintains the inherent right and corresponding obligation to protect its citizens from transnational criminal harms. In exceptional circumstances, this dual responsibility can extend to the targeted killing of terrorist leaders. If it were otherwise, world law would indeed be a suicide pact.
Under established international law principles governing insurgencies, the ends can never justify the means. A cause, even if it is arguably or seemingly legitimate, even if it is presumptively “sacred,” can never excuse premeditated violence against the innocent.
Furthermore: By the authoritative standards of contemporary international law, terrorists are akin to pirates in earlier times, subject to punishment (originally, hanging) by the first persons into whose hands they fall. At present, Hamas terrorists are international outlaws who fall within the operational scope of “universal jurisdiction.” This means, among other things, that any state can claim a valid right to arrest, prosecute and potentially target terrorist murderers even where there exist no geographic or citizen ties to the pertinent criminals.
In these matters, history warrants pride of place. Support for a limited right to the targeted killing of “common enemies of humankind” can be found in the classical writings of Aristotle, Plutarch and Cicero as well as in Jewish history. This history ranges from the Sicarii, who flourished at the time of destruction of the Second Temple, to the Lehi, who fought the British mandatory authority after World War II. If the worldwide community of states should ever choose to reject this right, it would then have to accept responsibility for any reciprocal violence launched upon innocent human beings.
The calculations are straightforward. Targeted killings, subject to applicable legal rules of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, can on occasion offer the least unwelcome form of national self-protection. In such cases, especially where additional terror-crimes are still in the planning stage, the legal acceptability of violent self-help measures should be self-evident.
In our anarchic system of international law, this proposition lies beyond logical doubt. The world legal system is designed to protect everyone from foreseeable infringements of human rights and includes the corollary principle of universal cooperation.
In the best of all possible worlds, targeted killing would hold no defensible place in law-based counterterrorism. But we do not yet live in the best of all possible worlds, and the negative aspects of any such defensive action ought never to be evaluated apart from alternative policy consequences. 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), more violence and death would have been inflicted upon many innocent human beings.
In the end, counterterrorism should always be governed by both legal and tactical criteria of assessment. If the expected human costs of a targeted assassination appear calculably lower than the expected costs of all other plausible self-defense options, such an assassination must emerge as the rational and moral choice. However odious it might at first appear, targeted killing in these circumstances could offer Israel the least injurious path to civilian security from insidious terror-violence.
Prof. 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 (PM Sharon). His twelfth and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018). A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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What’s Next for Canadian Jews After the Recent Election
New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with Donald Trump in the White House on May 6, 2025. Photo: Wiki Commons.
The final votes were still being tallied when the questions started coming from friends and family in Israel and the United States: when are you leaving?
For many Jewish Canadians, last week’s federal election presented an opportunity to end the mealy-mouthed equivocation of the governing Liberals on antisemitism at home and Israel’s right to re-establish its security in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Instead, they got another Liberal minority government, with Mark Carney as prime minister, but the same cast of characters around him.
Justin Trudeau’s government managed to commit numerous gaffes where the Jewish community was concerned, including feting a Waffen SS veteran in parliament. When a firestorm of antisemitic vandalism, arson and intimidation erupted after October 7, Trudeau usually made sure his outrage came with a side of caution against Islamophobia and all forms of hate.
On Israel, the Liberals displayed a moral equivalence that was a mix of outright credulity and cynical opportunism, most notoriously when multiple members of Trudeau’s cabinet, including the minister of innovation, science and industry, Francois-Phillipe Champagne and foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly parroted a Hamas Ministry of Health claim that the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital was bombed by the Israelis.
When the allegation turned out to be false, the government offered a late night Page Z15 style press release that was notable for how perfunctory it was. Trudeau’s government was also perceived as hostile to Jewish charities, or at least those with ties to Israel. It stripped both the Jewish National Fund and the Ne’eman Foundation of their charitable status.
Carney is not Trudeau. But he sent mixed signals to the Jewish community during the campaign.
On the one hand, he appointed Marco Mendicino, a former member of parliament and strong ally of both Israel and the Toronto Jewish community, as his chief of staff. However, he also retained many of Trudeau’s key lieutenants, including foreign minister Joly.
When Thomas Mulcair, the former leader of the socialist New Democratic Party, accused Joly of taking an anti-Israel position for electoral gain, Joly remarked: “Thomas, have you seen the demographics of my riding?”
On a state visit last year, Joly and fellow Liberal MP Ya’ara Sacks, who is a dual Israeli Canadian citizen, posed for a cringe-worthy photo op in which they held hands with Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas.
Sacks fought a bruising campaign against Roman Baber in a riding in which close to 15% of the population is Jewish. At one point, she distributed a leaflet with a swastika on it, implying that Baber, who is a descendant of Jewish Holocaust victims, had some connection to Nazism due to his opposition to COVID restrictions and support for the Freedom Convoy protests in 2022.
Baber defeated Sacks in the election.
Liberal incumbent Adam van Koeverden was videotaped stumping for votes with the men of a local mosque, while a female Liberal colleague was speaking to the “sisters” downstairs. Van Koeverden pledged his support in ending the “genocide” in Gaza and for “Palestinian sovereignty.”
Somehow the Israeli hostages languishing under horrifying conditions and the recent arson and vandalism attacks on synagogues, Jewish day schools, and Jewish-owned business in Toronto and Montreal must have slipped his mind.
Van Koeverden retained his seat by a handy margin.
Last year, longtime Liberal MP Rob Oliphant was recorded by a constituent complaining about his government’s decision to pause funding to UNRWA over the UN agency’s ties to terrorism. Oliphant was so upset that he considered quitting over the decision. In the end, the Trudeau Liberals reinstated the UNRWA funding and never did miss a payment.
Oliphant retained his seat with more than 60% of the vote.
Although the overwhelming majority of Canada’s arms sales go to the United States and Saudi Arabia, under Trudeau’s leadership, the Liberals imposed an arms embargo on Israel and took the unusual step of cancelling a contract with an American defense contractor because Quebec-made ammunition was going to find its way to Israel.
At a campaign event, a heckler asked Carney about the “genocide” in Gaza, to which he responded: “I’m aware. That’s why we have an arms embargo.”
When called out on the statement, Carney implausibly claimed that he somehow didn’t hear the word “genocide” in the question.
Of the 28 Liberal candidates who signed the “Palestine Pledge” — which called for an arms embargo on Israel and unilateral recognition of a state of Palestine — 18 won re-election. They will now make their case for a more aggressive anti-Israel foreign policy to the other 151 Liberal caucus members.
There was, however, some cause for optimism.
Former Green Party MP Jenica Atwin, who the Liberals welcomed to their party in 2021 after her attacks on her former party’s leader Annamie Paul, a Black Jewish woman who refused to demonize Israel, didn’t run for re-election.
And Majid Jowhari, who was alleged to be an agent of the Iranian regime (claims he denied), lost his seat.
Party discipline is strictly imposed in Canada’s parliamentary system. But even assuming Carney does intend to be more supportive of Canadian Jews and respectful of the security needs of a democratic Israeli ally than his predecessor ever was, like Trudeau, he has a parliamentary minority.
The Conservatives are his only serious competition, and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, has been an unapologetic supporter of Israel and Canada’s Jewish community. Poilievre lost his seat and will be out of parliament in the near term, but he will run in a by-election in a friendlier riding.
It’s possible Carney will make common cause with the Conservatives on Israel and the Jews, but given the views of many members of his caucus and the need to distinguish himself from his main rival, it’s more likely that he’ll continue to rely on the support of the NDP, with whom Trudeau held power for two years via a supply and confidence agreement. The other alternative is to look to the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
Neither of the two is a reliable friend of Canadian Jews, but the NDP, who were reduced to seven seats (out of a total of 343 in parliament), is particularly awful. Their relationship with the Jewish community has deteriorated to the point that, when B’nai Brith sent out questions to each party in advance of the election, the NDP didn’t bother to respond.
The October 7 attacks made emigration a frequent topic of conversation among Canadian Jews. It remains to be seen whether last week’s election result will stop that conversation or accelerate it.
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Nearly 60% of Palestinians Under the Palestinian Authority: October 7 Was ‘Correct Decision’
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visiting the West Bank city of Jenin. Photo: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman
More than a year and a half after the Hamas-led atrocities of October 7, 2023, 59% of Palestinians polled in the “West Bank” still think that Hamas’ made the “correct decision” to torture, rape, burn alive, murder, and kidnap hundreds of hostages — even including children — according to the most respected Palestinian polling agency.
The new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asks: “In your view, was Hamas’ decision to launch its offensive against Israel on 7 October a correct or incorrect one?”
The polling shows a continuation of the pattern of decreasing support since December 2023, when the first poll was taken after the October 7 atrocities. It found that 82% of “West Bank” Palestinians thought October 7 was a “correct decision.” In March and June 2024, just over 70% of Palestinians there supported it. In September 2024, support dropped to 64%. And now, 59% still say it was a “correct decision.”
The slow but continuous decline in support directly correlates with the worsening military defeat in Gaza. Although the overwhelming majority of Palestinians supported and still support the atrocities, as the cost goes up, fewer think it was the correct decision.
This is the current Palestinian Authority (PA) message to its people as well. While the PA’s initial response to the Nazi-like pogrom was immediate, spontaneous celebration, it has now changed its message, arguing that while the October 7 atrocities were “legitimate resistance,” the suffering it caused Palestinians in Gaza has made them unjustified. Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash expressed this explicitly when he stressed five times that October 7 was “legitimate resistance” before saying that “what Hamas carried out in terms of its consequences is illegitimate because it led to catastrophic consequences.”
As the poll shows, support is even lower among Gazans, who are the ones suffering directly from the war. Those there who see the decision as “correct” is now at 37%, having dropped from a high of 71%.
Interestingly, a total of 78% of Gazans blame Israel or the US for “the current suffering of Gazans” while only 12% blame Hamas. Coupled with that is the finding that 77% of Palestinians overall (and 85% of Palestinians in the PA-controlled “West Bank”) “oppose the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to stop the war on Gaza.”
The element that has certainly remained steady is that any Palestinian opposition to October 7 is not rooted in moral rejection of the atrocities, but in dissatisfaction with its fallout. It is not the massacre that many Palestinians regret but the cost.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
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A Powerful Bipartisan Display of Support for Israel in Washington
The US Capitol Building. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
It’s not every day that the Speaker of the House talks about stuffing his pockets with pebbles. But that’s precisely what happened at a dinner in Washington, D.C., just a few nights ago. Speaker Mike Johnson was addressing a room packed with over 300 rabbis and pastors from across the country — Jewish and Christian leaders who had come to the nation’s capital with a shared mission: to advocate for Israel and to send a clear, unified message — when it comes to Israel, we speak with one voice.
With quiet intensity, Speaker Johnson described an unplanned, deeply moving nighttime visit to the Valley of Elah in Israel — the very place where David confronted Goliath. Beneath the stars, he bent down and picked up a few smooth stones, just like the one the young shepherd placed in his sling.
At first, he took only one or two. But then, sensing this was a once-in-a-lifetime moment, he filled his pockets with them. He told us that he still carries a few and occasionally hands them out to people who inspire him. “We all need courage in our pocket,” he said.
Moments earlier, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) had taken the podium. His voice cracking with emotion, he described his own nighttime visit to a high vantage point just outside Jerusalem, from which he could see Mount Nebo in the distance. That moment, he said, changed his life. It brought to mind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, delivered the night before his assassination:
I don’t know what will happen now — we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
The following evening, Dr. King was slain by an assassin’s bullet. Senator Booker told us about his visit to the Lorraine Motel — now the National Civil Rights Museum — and the powerful words inscribed on the memorial at the assassination site: “Behold, the dreamer cometh.” The very words Joseph’s brothers sneered as they plotted to kill him. But Joseph’s dreams came true. Those dreams, once mocked, became the blueprint for a nation that would eventually inherit the Promised Land.
Two powerful Biblical images. Two American leaders. One shared commitment. That the Land of Israel is not just geography — it is the foundation of spiritual passion and a divine mission.
With that sacred footing, I joined my fellow clergy — rabbis from Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform communities, alongside Christian pastors from Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and mainline denominations — on Capitol Hill to speak with one voice, and to lobby for Israel. This incredible gathering of faith leaders was organized by the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, American Christian Leaders for Israel, Israel Allies Foundation, and Eagles Wings.
It was historic. Never before has such a large, diverse, and spiritually charged delegation of faith leaders descended on Washington with a single, united message: that the Jewish state has the right — no, the obligation — to defend itself against those who deny its very existence and seek its destruction; and that there is a moral imperative to bring home the remaining hostages still trapped in the dark, fetid tunnels of Gaza, after more than eighteen agonizing months in captivity.
We didn’t agree on everything. Let’s be honest — you wouldn’t expect 300 faith leaders to agree on everything. Or maybe even on anything. But for 48 hours, we proved that we all agree on one thing: Israel.
What mattered wasn’t what divided us, but what united us. A shared belief that evil must be confronted. That truth must be spoken. That Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy — and that no force on earth can stop the forward march of history.
Walking through the marble-floored, wood-paneled corridors of the Congressional office buildings, it was impossible not to feel the stark contrast between this moment and a far darker chapter in American Jewish history.
In October 1943, more than 400 Orthodox rabbis came to Washington to plead for action as millions of Jews were being slaughtered in Nazi Europe. They were ignored. President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to meet with them. No Christian leaders stood by their side. And the press barely noticed.
But just over 80 years later, history is not repeating itself. This time, the White House sent an official representative to the opening event. More than 100 Members of Congress and Senators welcomed us into their offices. And our Christian brothers and sisters were not just present — they were passionate, eloquent, and deeply committed in their support.
To be clear, this wasn’t a partisan gathering. Democrats and Republicans embraced us, heard us out, and stood with us. Something fundamental has shifted.
This week, in every synagogue around the world, we will read the portion of Kedoshim. God commands us: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). It’s a big ask. Holiness in this world doesn’t come naturally.
But the Hasidic masters — those spiritual giants who reached into the mystical realms — offered a beautiful interpretation. Holiness, they taught, doesn’t mean retreating from the world and becoming a hermit. It means inviting the Divine into the world, so that the world itself becomes holy. To be holy is to elevate the mundane — to ensure that what is sacred finds expression in our lives, in our institutions, and in every corner of our shared reality.
Kedoshim lays out some of the most practical and moral commandments in the Torah: don’t cheat, don’t gossip, don’t take revenge, love your neighbor. Because being holy isn’t about hiding away like a saint in a cave.
It’s about showing up in the world.
It’s about walking into the halls of power with pebbles in your pocket and conviction in your heart.
It’s about standing shoulder to shoulder with people who may not share your theology but who share your values.
And it’s about remembering that holiness isn’t some distant, glowing aura — it’s what happens when you choose to do what’s right, even when it’s hard.
And that’s what we were doing on the Hill. I left Washington with two powerful images in my mind. One was Speaker Johnson’s smooth pebbles — symbols of faith, preparation, and courage in the face of towering threats. The other was Senator Booker’s tearful voice, evoking Joseph — the dreamer thrown into a pit by his brothers, only to rise and save a nation.
Both Biblical stories end with redemption. But both begin with someone daring to stand up and be a believer against the odds. To share the prophecy. To walk into the battlefield. To create a future shaped by faith and salvation.
In the Valley of Elah, David was challenged by his brother Eliav, who saw his presence on the battlefield as an intrusion. David responded incredulously: “Why shouldn’t I be here? Who says my presence doesn’t matter?” He was right.
And in Kedoshim, God tells us: “Be holy.” He’s telling us that everyone has the power to bring holiness into the world — right here, right now.
This week in Washington, those two ideas converged. We belonged there — on the battlefield. And we brought holiness with us: into the halls of power, and through the corridors of influence. For Israel. For truth. For the world. And maybe — for redemption too.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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