The Death Penalty

I'm often asked why I can be anti-capital punishment yet support Israel's right to extra-judicial assassination such as in the wake of the Munich Massacre or against Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
I'm very much against the death penalty. No state should sanction the killing of someone that is already within their custody and secure from any further harm against the public. Should the prisoner escape and once again threaten the public then any protection they had from state sanction death is void.
A government has a right to protect itself but it doesn't have a right to be vengeful, it has a right to punish but it doesn't have a right to kill (shamelessly stolen from West Wing).
Extra-judicial assassination on the other hand is a very different matter. It is (in many cases) not based on vengeance but rather on pre-emption. If someone is coming at you with a spear then you stab him before he can stab you.
Case in point; Yahya Ayyash (aka The Engineer) who was a HAMAS bomb maker and caused the deaths of over 90 Israeli's and wounded hundreds of others. After a massive man-hunt lasting months it was decided that the best way to proceed was to eliminate him. A source was given a mobile phone that contained a small explosive, as soon as Ayyash put it up to his ear it was detonated killing only him.
In this case it was a more feasible option to eliminate the target rather than risk the lives of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians to bring him in front of a jury.
Whilst I don't believe that all governments should pursue this course of action to apprehend criminals, the assassination of generals and terrorist who have openly declared war on your people (this declaration of war was repeated just hours ago at the HAMAS 20th Anniversary) then they are legitimate targets for assassination. Had the Israeli's arrested Ayyash then he would have ended up in front of a civil court and been given numerous life sentences. There has only been one occasion when Israel has used the death penalty in a civil courtroom and that was in the 1960's with Adolf Einchmann, architect of the Holocaust, a unique case if I ever saw one. Governments should make every attempt to bring terrorists to justice under a civil judiciary however if doing so openly risks the lives of the soldiers and the civilians that they hide behind then targeted assassination is the only option.
That, my friends, is why I differentiate between capital punishment (of which I am against) and targeted assassination of terrorists (of which I am for)