The assassination of Imad Mughniyeh

It's been over a week since the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, one of the leading Hezbollah terrorists, and Mossad has taken the blame. I have no information if it was the Israeli government who killed this man but it seems they have already been accused by the Hezbollah leadership. In a previous post i proclaimed my support for these assassinations and i reiterate that once again.
This man was evil; his deliberate attacks on civilians led to an enormous loss of life not only within the Middle East but he is also believed to be behind the 1994 bombing of the AMIA centre which killed 85 people.
Whilst it would have been preferable to have this man face justice in an Israeli courtroom he was notorious for his paranoia; often changing his clothes, sleeping in separate houses every night and strangely having no bodyguards. He did this in order to avoid any kind of information being leaked to the various intelligence agencies that were hunting him.
However whoever did assassinate him did an astounding job (it was believed that the small explosive was placed in the headrest of his car-seat) and whilst i'm sure Israel did have a hand in it, it could not have been done without the support of their Arab neighbors. Hezbollah is a threat to the entire region with its tentacles, funded by Iran, being able to reach into Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordann and various other countries. This way why three Arab states openly aligned against Hezbollah (and by default, allying with Israel) in the beginning of the 2006 war.
Many of them are afraid of what would happen should Hezbollah and Iran get too strong (they're also deeply concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon) and topple their regimes. Many, like the Mubarak regime in Egypt, are far from perfect. The Egyptian dictatorship has oppressed citizens and media alike and routinely imprison political opponents who wish for democratic change. However they are also funded largely by the Americans who have given this dangerous regime a modern and very deadly army. Mubarak and many other Middle Eastern governments are fearful of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood's influence in Egypt, for they could soon gain power, and so are hoping for their downfall.
Whether or not Israel planned this assassination is irrelevant. There are plenty of Arab states who wanted Mughiniyeh dead and they could have taken care of this problem themselves.

Two very interesting news articles

Shin Bet data shows dramatic drop in 2007 terror fatalities

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent


Thirteen Israelis were killed by Palestinians in 2007, the lowest number in years, according to data released yesterday by the Shin Bet security service.

The fatality figures for 2006 and 2005 were 24 and 50, respectively.

Moreover, there was only one successful suicide bombing last year, down from six in 2006 and 60 during the intifada's worst year, 2002. That bombing, in Eilat last January, killed three people.

According to the Shin Bet, the sharp decline in terror stemmed not from a drop in the terrorists' motivation, but from Israel's success in foiling attacks. This success is based on three elements: the separation fence, superb intelligence, and the Israel Defense Forces' almost complete freedom of action in the West Bank.

The data show "as close as possible to a victory over terror," a senior defense official told Haaretz. "The IDF and Shin Bet succeeded in thwarting suicide terror, reducing it to a tolerable level."

In contrast to the sharp decline in suicide bombings, however, rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza continued apace. In total, Palestinians fired 1,263 rockets and 1,511 mortar shells at southern Israel last year, compared with 1,722 rockets and 55 mortars in 2006. Rocket attacks accounted for two of last year's fatalities, both in Sderot.

The Shin Bet estimates that 80 tons of explosives have been smuggled into Gaza since Hamas ousted Fatah in the strip last June, and that Hezbollah funnels $10 million a year to Palestinian terror groups.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/940526.html


and


Study: Number of Palestinians killed by IDF dropped 43% in '07

By Avi Issacharoff



The number of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces in 2007 decreased by 43 percent since last year, to 373, but the total number of Palestinians killed this year reached a record high because of the 344 Palestinians killed in the internecine conflict, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said in its year-end report.

The report also found a significant drop in the proportion of civilians killed, which decreased from 54 percent of the 657 Palestinians killed by IDF fire in 2006 to 35 percent of the 373 Palestinians killed between January 1 and December 29 of this year.

Fifty-three of the Palestinians were minors and the vast majority - 270 - were killed in the Gaza Strip.

In addition, seven Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinian fire in 2007 - the lowest number since the second intifada began.

Civilians killed

Three of the civilians were killed in a suicide bombing in Eilat, two by a Qassam rocket in Sderot and two in a shooting attack in the West Bank, while six Israeli security personnel were killed by Palestinian fire this year. In contrast, 17 Israeli civilians were killed in 2006, according to B'Tselem.

The organization also found that the settler population grew by 4.5 percent this year, far exceeding population growth but showing a lower rate of growth than last year, when the settler population increased by 5.8 percent.

There are 36 manned roadblocks in the West Bank that are along the Green Line, and another 66 that are not, B'Tselem found. It said the number of unmanned roadblocks, such as heaps of dirt or cement blocks blocking the entrance to villages, increased to 459 this year, compared to 445 in 2006 and 410 in 2005, but that the number of surprise IDF roadblocks decreased in the second half of 2007.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/940067.html

These reports indicate that the war on terror in Israel is being won with fewer civilian casualties on both sides. An aggressive military approach is halting terrorists before they have the chance to attack. Furthermore the army is adapting their methods to cope with urban warfare and using more non-lethal tactics. Hopefully within the next few years there will be results in single figures, and please god that figure will be 0.

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)

Why Iraq will be seen as a failure in the War on Terror.

Make no mistake about it. We are at war with terror and our enemy is fanatical in their belief, battle-hardened and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. George Bush is without a doubt the worst president in history (I include William Henry Harrison who died within 30 days of taking office, at least he taught people not to give long speeches in the rain) and the effect of his presidency will have unknown consequences for years to come.
However, Saddam Hussein was a danger and he was pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction along with funding terrorism in the Occupied Territories which created instability in the region but an invasion was not the correct course of action. We've currently been in Iraq for 4 years and upon careful consideration I understand why the Bush administration was pushing for regime change in the country. Saddam had constantly flouted international sanctions and whilst he did not have WMD's at the current time there was evidence presented to Congress during David Kay's briefing in 2004 that Iraqi scientists had deliberately misled UN weapon inspectors due to fear from the Hussein regime. With intelligence pointing towards a covert build up on WMD’s and a mad-man who had no respect for the rule of law (including terrorizing his own citizens and torturing political prisoners) the US saw little option but regime change and I support that.
However, the War on Terror cannot be fought by an army. To instil regime change (as is quietly being done in Iran) you must first support a pro-democratic group through funding and intelligence. After supplying the pro-democratic group with enough intelligence and weaponry allow them to quickly and quietly remove any remnants of the tyrannical regime that stood before it. When the citizen’s wake the next day there will be a pro-democratic government and trade can resume with sanctions being lifted. Political prisoners would be released, a constitution would be drafted which focused on ensuring civil liberties and human rights were paramount and restricting governments to 4 years or less in order to ensure that governments could be overthrown via legal and legitimate elections.
These measures would ensure that there were limited civilian casualties during the period of transition and eventually the new government would gain international recognition and another democracy would be born.
This method is of course a best case scenario and it could lead to many different paths, some good and some bad but it is the way that the War on Terror will be won. Notice that in this scenario there is no mention of a foreign military presence and no need for hundreds of thousands of troops. The War on Terror will be fought quietly and it will take longer than any war fought in the last century. When we eventually prevail there will be no victory parade with confetti covering the troops or monument of soldiers raising an American flag because this war will be fought in the shadows and the warriors will be the smartest and the toughest that the West has ever produced. This war will be fought by the spies and the battlefield won’t be troops moving from house to house but a lone man with a silenced pistol in an alleyway. To quote the 1998 movie The Siege "The army is a broadsword and what you need is a scalpel". America may prevail in Iraq, crush the insurgents and install a peaceful, democratic government but Iraq is and will always be considered a failure in the War on Terror. It has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi's (this number is very difficult to determine due to the ease that insurgent forces have of passing themselves off as civilians) and over a thousand US and British lives that could have been averted.
Terrorism cannot be fought by an army; despite painful efforts to keep civilian deaths to a minimum, innocent people will die during aerial bombings which in turn will increase animosity to the Western World and create a never-ending cycle of violence. Carefully planned targeted assassinations dramatically reduce the amount of civilian casualties and hopefully in the years to come the scalpel that are the intelligence services of the Western World will finally eradicate those that threaten our freedoms and democracy.