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What the Law Actually Says About Targeting Jihadist Terrorists

Explosions take place on the deck of the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion on the Red Sea, in this handout picture released Aug. 29, 2024. Photo: Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS

During the coming year, the United States, in occasional concert with Israel, must confront expanding terrorist threats. Topping pertinent concerns in Washington and Jerusalem will be an assortment of jihadi groups, some spawned by the al-Assad regime collapse in Syria and some by coinciding reconfigurations of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Houthi criminals. Also predictable are (1) strengthened and dispersed Fatah units beyond Judea/Samaria (West Bank); and (2) variously lethal synergies between criminal terrorist organizations that include al-Qaeda and ISIS remnants.

Under the protective tutelage of an American president, “We the People” are entitled to expect basic safety in world politics. At a minimum, we should all be able to assume that wider and consistently capable circles of public authority remain poised to thwart terror attacks.

In terms of United States law, the authoritative roots of core security assurances go back to 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Though likely unfamiliar to America’s current president and his senior defense advisors, Hobbes’ Leviathan was integral to the political thought of Thomas Jefferson. The erudite author of the Declaration was widely read by all categories of educated persons.

Regarding US counterterrorist preparation, America’s national security establishment must get ready for all contingencies, most plainly jihadi terrorists who seek “martyrdom.” This includes fashioning conceptual foundations for future Osama Bin-Laden “elimination-type” operations.

During the Obama years, one conspicuously major targeted killing of a jihadi terrorist was the September 2011 US drone-assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. That case was notably “special” in one generally overlooked or underestimated aspect: Jihadi al-Alwaki was born in New Mexico, and was therefore a US citizen. At the same time, despite the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protections regarding “due process,” it represented a tactical option that could sometime need to be repeated.

Here, a presumptively effective tactic would simultaneously undermine American law and justice.

What should be decided in Washington? Each and every trade-off option would be injurious. Even if we take with utmost seriousness Cicero’s reasonable injunction (“The safety of the people shall be the highest law”), it’s not clear which operational choices would best serve such indispensable “safety?”

What precise legal guidelines should Americans follow in these settings?

To respond properly, Trump and his designated counselors will need to inquire: “Is it sufficiently legal to target and kill jihadi terrorists if precise linkages between prospective targets and discernible attack intentions can be documented?”

To meaningfully answer this critical question, it will first be necessary for Trump’s national security officials to ask whether a proposed terrorist killing plan would be gainfully preemptive or just narrowly retributive. If the latter, a judgment wherein national self-defense was not in any way the underlying operational rationale, authoritative determinations of legality could become more problematic. It would not be sensible to launch risky defensive actions against terrorist adversaries solely because these actions could meet jurisprudential standards.

 It gets even more complicated.

Assassination is explicitly prohibited by US law. (See Exec. Order No. 12333, 3 C.F.R. 200 (1988), reprinted in 50 U.S.C.  Sec. 401 (1988)). Generally, it is also a crime under international law, which, though not widely understood, is part of American domestic law.

Still, at least in certain more-or-less residual circumstances, the targeted killing of jihadi terrorist leaders could be correctly excluded from ordinarily prohibited behaviors. Accordingly, such peremptorily protective actions could still be defended as permissible expressions of national law-enforcement.

A similar defense could sometimes be applied to the considered killing of terrorist “rank-and-file,” especially where such selective lethality had become part of an already-ongoing pattern of US counter-terrorism. Earlier, for example, the United States widened the scope of its permissible terrorist targeting in parts of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. This widened arc of permissibility — one which now modifies more stringent rules of engagement concerning human target identification — represented a byproduct of continuously developing drone technologies.

In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for any decentralized or “vigilante” expressions of international justice. Obviously, we don’t yet live in such an ideal world. Instead, enduring uneasily in an historically anarchic world order- – a context that international law professors prefer to call “Westphalian.”

At some still-indeterminable point, terrorist escalations could lead to instances of chemical, biological or nuclear attack. These unprecedented attacks (ones that are sui generis in law) might be undertaken by assorted sub-state adversaries or by certain “hybrid” combinations of state and sub-state foes. Ironically, in the policies of US ally Israel, dominant concerns have centered on Iran-Hezbollah and Iran/Hamas combinations. Here, an evident irony stems from the fact that one Iranian surrogate (Hezbollah) is Shiite while the other (Hamas) is Sunni.

In our persistently anarchic and prospectively chaotic world legal system, assorted jihadi leaders are already responsible for the mass killing of noncombatant men, women, and children of many different nationalities. It follows that wherever such leaders are not suitably “terminated” by the United States or Israel in the tumultuous Middle East, egregious terror crimes will almost certainly continue and be left unpunished.

Any impunity would be inconsistent with the universal legal obligation to punish international crimes, a jus cogens or peremptory obligation reaffirmed at the original Nuremberg Tribunal and in the subsequent Nuremberg Principles.

Inevitably, complex considerations of law and tactics will intersect and inter-penetrate. In this connection, the glaring indiscriminacy of most jihadist operations is rarely if ever the result of adversarial inadvertence. Typically, it is the intentional outcome of violent terrorist inclinations, unambiguously murderous ideals that lay embedded in the jihadist terrorist leader’s operative views of insurgency.

For jihadists, there can never be meaningful distinctions between civilians and non-civilians, between innocents and non-innocents. For these active or latent terrorist murderers, all that really matters are unassailably immutable distinctions between Muslims, “apostates” and “unbelievers.”

As for the apostates and unbelievers, it’s quite simple. Their lives, believe the jihadists, have no value. Prima facie, they have no immunizing sanctity. In law, both international and national, every government has the right and obligation to protect its citizens against external harms.

Usually, assassination is a certifiable crime under international law. Yet, in our essentially decentralized system of world law, extraordinary self-help by individual states is often necessary, and more-then-occasionally the only real alternative to passively sufferance of terror crimes. In the absence of particular targeted killings, terrorists would continue to create havoc against defenseless civilians almost anywhere of their choosing and with unjust impunity.

A basic difficulty is that jihadi terror criminals are usually immune to the more orthodox legal expectations of extradition and prosecution (aut dedere, aut judicare). This is not to suggest that the targeted killing of terrorists will always “work” — there is literally nothing to support the logic of any such suggestion — but only that disallowing such killing ex ante might not be operationally gainful or legally just.

If carried out with aptly due regard for pertinent “rules,” targeting terrorist leaders could remain consistent with the ancient legal principle of Nullum crimen sine poena, “No crime without a punishment.” Earlier, this original principle of justice had been cited as a dominant rationale for both the Tokyo and Nuremberg war crime tribunals. Subsequently, it was incorporated into customary international law, an authoritative source of law identified inter alia at Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

 By both the codified and customary standards of contemporary international law, all terrorists are hostes humani generis, or “common enemies of humankind.” Still, choosing precisely which terrorists ought to be targeted remains a largely ideological rather than jurisprudential matter.

Overall, in his consideration of assassination or targeted-killing as counter-terrorism, President Trump should consider the clarifying position of 18th century Swiss scholar Emmerich de Vattel in his most famous work, The Law of Nations, or the Principles of Natural Law (1758): “The safest plan is to prevent evil where that is possible. A Nation has the right to resist the injury another seeks to inflict upon it, and to use force and every other just means of resistance against the aggressor.”

Even earlier, the right of self-defense by forestalling an attack had been asserted by the foundational Dutch scholar, Hugo Grotius, in Book II of The Law of War and Peace (1625). Recognizing the need for what later jurisprudence would reference as threatening international behavior that is “imminent in point of time,” Grotius indicated that self-defense must be permitted not only after an attack has already been suffered, but also in advance, where “the deed may be anticipated.”

Further on, in the same chapter, Grotius summarized: “It be lawful to kill him who is preparing to kill.” Interestingly, Vattel, Pufendorf and Grotius were all taken into primary account by Thomas Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence.

International law is not a suicide pact. “Where the ordinary remedy fails, recourse must be had to an extraordinary one.”

Donald Trump is obligated to comply with the rules and procedures of humanitarian international law, yet he must also bear in mind that jihadist enemies will remain unaffected by these or any other jurisprudential expectations. Assassination and broader forms of preemption may sometimes be not only allowable under binding international law, but indispensable.

Conversely, there are occasions when strategies of assassination could be determinedly legal but be operationally ineffectual. Recalling the close connections between international law and US law — connections that extend to direct and literal forms of “incorporation” – -an American president can never choose to dismiss the law of war on grounds that it is “merely international.”Always, President Trump should consider decipherable connections between targeted killings, counter-terrorism, and United States Constitutional Law.

Under US law, we are bound to inquire, should an American president ever be authorized to order the extra-judicial killing of a United States citizen — even one deemed an “enemy combatant” — without meaningful reference to “due process of law?” On its face, any affirmative response to this query would be difficult to defend under the US Constitution.

Operational approval would need to be based upon a reasonably presumed high urgency of terror threat. Any such allegedly “authorized” targeted killing of US citizens would express potentially irremediable tension between indissoluble citizen rights and peremptory requirements of public safety. Going forward with obligatory counter terrorist preparations, the US president will need to keep this firmly in mind.

US policy on assassination or targeted killing will have to reflect a very delicate balance. Most important, in any such calculation, will be the protection of civilian populations from jihadist terror-inflicted harms. In those circumstances where harms would involve unconventional weapons of any sort — chemical, biological or nuclear — the legal propriety of targeting jihadists could be patently obvious (per Cicero, above) and “beyond reasonable doubt.”

In sum, for both the United States and Israel, legal assessments of targeted killing ought never be undertaken apart from correlative operational expectations. This means that before any “extraordinary remedies” should be applied, these measures would be not only legally correct, but tactically cost-effective. In the end, as we may finally be reminded by Cicero in The Laws, “The safety of the people shall be the highest law.”

Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by Jewish Business News.

The post What the Law Actually Says About Targeting Jihadist Terrorists first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Why Do Western Countries Treat Qatar Better Than Their Jewish Citizens?

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Growing up in communist Prague, I was exposed to antisemitism expressed largely by government officials and communist outlets, rather than by citizens themselves.

I learned in school about three major enemies of the socialist republic of Czechoslovakia: Germans seeking to conquer back the Sudetenland, American imperialists, and, you might have guessed, Zionists. And I was one of them.

The propaganda during the Six-Day War was unrelenting and hostile to Israel. Some years later, during my studies in medical school, I was invited to continue as a graduate student at the genetics institute after obtaining my MD degree. However, a year or so later, I was disinvited because I was Jewish.

Surprisingly, the old Jewish quarter in Prague was relatively well maintained — it was a big tourist attraction, especially for Germans, and a good source of Western currency for the state. There was also a permanent exhibit of art by Jewish children imprisoned in Theresienstadt during World War II. And we did read Anne’s Frank diary. Prague was still much better than the Soviet Union and Romania.

At that time, Western Europe, the US, and Canada were the beacons of freedom for everybody, including Jews. A few decades later, it appears to me that the sides have switched.

Central and Eastern Europe (not counting Russia) have become more hospitable to Jews, and Western Europe and Canada are outright hostile. The situation in the US is somewhat mixed. What happened?

Most Western officials and leaders blame Israel for the war in Gaza, and they accuse Israel of genocide, intentional famine, and starvation of Gazans. Hamas has become — or at least is becoming — a beacon of freedom, especially among younger generations. In the meantime, the EU, UK, and Canada are threatening Israel with sanctions and recognizing a State of Palestine, which is basically a reward for Oct. 7.

Affairs have further deteriorated after Israel’s bombing of a meeting of Hamas leaders in Doha last week. Everybody runs to the defense of Qatar — after all, Qatar is considered an “honest” mediator between Israel and Hamas. This is the same Qatar that is the instigator of anti-Zionism and antisemitism by infiltrating Western institutions, particularly universities and subverting the education of Western values into support for radicalism, and is also the host of Hamas leaders and financiers, including those who planned the October 7 massacre.

Do Western countries really believe that Qatar, led by an emir with three wives, with a track record of slave working conditions of its foreign workers and with funding of Hamas terrorists, deserves support?

Furthermore, the hate in Western Europe is not being directed just at Israelis (which is still wrong, since Israel is not a monolith) — but against all Jews.

Jews, and particularly Israeli Jews, are disinvited from conferences, art performances, collaborations with their colleagues, sports events, and more. They are dehumanized and physically attacked on the streets of Western cities. The Spanish Prime Minister has been attempting to throw out Israeli athletes from several competitions because they were attacked by pro-Palestinian demonstrators rather than preventing demonstrators from attacking Israelis.

What is going to happen to Jews living in the West? Will they really be protected? Overall, Western governments appear to be willing to throw their Jewish citizens under the bus. Why is that? Do they really trust Qatar as an honest mediator, and even more as the most important non-NATO ally? Do they pretend they’ve never heard about Qatar’s subversive role in Western countries and support of the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they afraid of their increasing Muslim populations due to immigration and high birth rates in their own countries? Don’t they realize that they are falling into a moral morass at an accelerating rate?

It is unclear how long Western outrage at Israel will last. Is it going to be short-lived, like when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981? Or will the West try to humiliate Israel and force (or at least attempt to do so) a solution to the war that leaves Hamas in power and isolates Israel internationally? One can only hope that the West, led by the US, will make the right decision not only for Israel, but for all democratic countries.

Dr. Jaroslava Halper has been a professor of pathology at The University of Georgia in Athens, GA for many years. She escaped from communist Prague because of antisemitism, and lack of freedom and free speech. The gradual increase of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in certain circles in her second homeland, and the devastating October 7 massacre by Hamas, led her to realize that more active engagement is necessary to combat antisemitism, including anti-Zionism.

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Palestinian Authority: Marco Rubio’s ‘Invasion’ of the Western Wall Is a Crime Against Islam

Benjamin Netanyahou and Marco Rubio. Photo: David Azagury, US Embassy Jerusalem

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ambassador Mike Huckabee visited the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) was incensed by this visit, and publicized a long condemnation by the PA Jerusalem Governorate against what they called a “crime” against Islamic holy places:

The participation in these invasions by high-ranking American officials in an official capacity constitutes unacceptable collusion with the occupation’s policy, and dangerous willful blindness to the daily crimes committed against the holy city, its residents, and its holy places.

When Jews and Christians pray at the Western Wall or on the Temple Mount, the PA condemns what they call “Talmudic ceremonies.” The visit “offends the feelings of our Palestinian people”:

The Jerusalem Governorate viewed the invasion of the occupation’s Prime Minister — Benjamin Netanyahu, American Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and American Senator [sic, Ambassador] Mike Huckabee into the Western Wall plaza, and the fact that they held Talmudic ceremonies at this purely Islamic site, as a provocative step that offends the feelings of our Palestinian people and constitutes a blatant violation of the historical and legal status quo in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Even though Muslims built a mosque in Jerusalem on the site of the Temples specifically because it was a Jewish holy site, today the PA proclaims that the Western Wall is a solely Islamic site:

The governorate emphasized that the Western Wall is an inseparable part of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and that it is part of the Islamic Waqf lands under Palestinian sovereignty. It further stressed that there is no legitimacy for any Israeli or foreign presence within it, without the approval of the relevant Palestinian authorities.

The PA even threatened that this “escalation” would have “consequences”:

The governorate warned of this escalation’s consequences on the situation on the ground within the city. It emphasized that the Palestinian people would not agree to any harm to the Arab identity of Jerusalem or its Islamic and Christian holy places, and that they would resist all attempts to impose the occupation’s sovereignty over the land and the people. The governorate called on the international community… to curb the occupation’s violations and stop the American involvement in support for the Judaization projects of the occupied city.

[PA Jerusalem Governorate, Facebook, September 14, 2025]

The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared. 

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What Charlie Kirk Meant to Jewish Conservatives

Charlie Kirk speaking at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

The horrific assassination of activist Charlie Kirk has left Jewish conservatives asking who will weaken the anti-Jewish hostility brewing in some corners of the far right now that Kirk has left us.

The 31-year-old, a devout Christian and founder of the organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA), understood that a society that turns on its Jews is a society that is rotting at its core.

When it came to quieting the antisemitic energies of the far right, Kirk knew that the conspiratorial scapegoating was a symptom of a serious malady, aggravated by an anxious and unhappy generation living in a digital den within an increasingly secularized America.

Kirk said that rejecting antisemitism, which he called “demonic,” was directly tied to defending Western civilization and protecting America’s Judeo-Christian identity.

That’s sadly ironic, given that many far right conspiracists online have blamed the Jewish people or Israel for Kirk’s murder.

In what may have conveyed a warning to the crop of influencers seeking to manipulate the Kirk assassination to advance their anti-Jewish objectives, US President Donald Trump released an image on Friday, showing the US leader and Kirk embracing against a backdrop of a US and Israeli flag with the caption reading, “Everybody Loved Charlie!”

Kirk’s speaking engagements at college campuses across the country drew thousands of students, admirers, and protestors. The informal open-air events provided participants with a platform to ask the late conservative influencer his thoughts on a host of issues, with many questions focused on Israel, Gaza, and the Jews.

Always respectful, Kirk carefully articulated why antisemitism is anti-Americanism.

Whether coming from the progressive left or the far right, Kirk defended Israel through a strategic and historical lens, and rejected the slew of libelous accusations leveled against the Jewish State.

Most recently, the TPUSA President exposed liberal media outlets for their role in fomenting the lie that Israel was starving the citizens of Gaza.

He also inspired Jewish conservatives to confront toxic positions with serious rebuttals, rather than with reflexive smears, while affirming that the path to a healthier country required responding to unsavory ideas through thoughtful and critical reason.

Acknowledging that it’s “hunting season for Jews right now in this country and that is a sick thing,” Kirk recently instructed an Israeli student who was harassed on a US campus to get “tougher.”

Indeed, he encouraged Jews to fight hate not with grievance, but with grit.

Jewish victimhood may have worked as a convenient tool of the political left, but Kirk saw the necessity and beauty in Jewish strength.

He emboldened Jewish Americans to lean into faith, and showed us that religion is the moral and divine anchor in today’s complicated and liberalized world.

Kirk advocated for issues that were in American Jews’ best interest, even as many of our own leaders resisted departing from the liberal sensibilities that undermined Jewish safety, and refused to acknowledge the dangers embedded in liberal immigration regulations.

As mainstream Jewish groups ignored the challenges associated with the increasing number of Muslims with radical ideologies entering the US, Kirk was firm in his assertion that radicalized Islam was incompatible with Western civilizational values.

Kirk granted right-leaning American Jews the space and the courage to sharpen our arguments as to why adopting strict immigration provisions was sound policy. He also defended Israel his whole life, and was an astute observer of the cracks in the emerging debate among younger conservative cohorts as it relates to safeguarding the US-Israel bond.

Warning of an “earthquake coming on this issue”, Kirk convened a focus group over the summer featuring Gen Z conservatives to discuss America’s alliance with Israel.

It was a candid discussion, and the panel provided a blueprint for what constituted “persuadable” pro-Israel arguments, and why, according to the young TPUSA supporters, focusing on shared values, radical Islamist threats, and intelligence cooperation was more of a motivator for bolstering support for Israel than unveiling public campaigns that underscored the progressive policies undertaken by the Jewish State.

The horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk has left Jewish Americans with an intense sadness over losing a friend who was critical to sidelining the anti-Jewish rumblings occurring across the cultural and political landscape.

As an Evangelical Christian, Kirk also taught American Jewry the value of adhering to our Jewish inheritance. He delivered a roadmap for how strong Jews, who commit to channeling conservative ideals through robust debate, are crucial to preserving the Judeo-Christian character of our country and will organically yield a US-Israel alliance that will be a bulwark against the enemies of Western civilization.

Irit Tratt is a writer who resides in New York. Follow her on X @Irit_Tratt.

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