Alexander Chester: Attacks against Hamas steps toward peace

On March 22, Israeli military forces killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Yassin was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Israelis, and Israel hoped that by removing the terrorist organization's top leader, the organization would be limited in its ability to carry out further attacks.

Around the world, Israel's action was met with criticism, and many predicted an increase in anti-Jewish violence as a result of the strike. Hamas, which the United States classifies as a terrorist organization, along with its new leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, vowed revenge that would "be like an earthquake that will shake all of the state of Israel."

On April 17, Rantisi himself was killed in an Israeli strike. Yet again, the world exploded in condemnation. In addition to the spate of criticism from Arab countries, the governments of France and England, who themselves have used targeted assassinations in the past, were quick to point the finger of blame directly at Israel.

Yet the very notion that these strikes were immoral, or illegal under international law, is completely ludicrous.

According to Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the world's pre-eminent defense lawyers and an expert on international law, "targeting the military leaders of an enemy during hostilities is perfectly proper ... which is what Israel, as well as the United States and other democracies, have done."

Dershowitz, who also calls himself a sometime critic of Israel, further defended targeted killings, saying that international law states it is "entirely legal to target and kill an enemy combatant who has not surrendered. Palestinian terrorists -- whether they are the suicide bombers themselves, those who recruit them, those in charge of the operation or commanders of terrorist groups -- are undoubtedly enemy combatants, regardless of whether they wear official uniforms or three-piece suits."

Further, a state's moral and legal responsibility to its people is to provide for the public's defense and ensure justice for its citizens, something that is clearly delineated in the U.S. Constitution. And there is no doubt that the killings of Yassin and Rantisi qualify as acts of both defense and justice -- the men were guilty of murder. In the past 3 1/2 years alone, with these two men at the helm, Hamas perpetrated 427 terrorist attacks, killing 379 Israelis and wounding 2,079. The government of Israel has repeatedly stated that it would stop targeting Hamas terrorists if the Palestinian Authority would arrest them, but that simply has not happened.

But this issue is not only important in Israel, because Hamas' target extends beyond the Jewish state. According to Hamas' official Web site, the United States and its citizens are also targets for Hamas-sponsored terror attacks. On that Web site, Rantisi recently stated that "there is no border to American aggression ... . Do we not have the right to turn our bodies into bombs as we don't have weapons of mass destruction which they use to kill our children?" Rantisi even went as far as attributing the Columbia space shuttle tragedy as "God's punishment to the U.S. for its crimes against Muslims."

But justice was not the sole reason for the killing of these two men. Yassin and Rantisi are not just men who had killed in the past. They were men who were actively inciting and organizing killings that would have continued as long as they lived.

The state of Israel had an obligation to its people to kill Yassin and Rantisi. This was not an obligation to the hundreds of dead that Yassin and Rantisi murdered; it was an obligation to the 5 million Israeli citizens/Hamas targets that thus far have escaped.

By allowing both Yassin and Rantisi to live through four years of a war they raged against the people of Israel, Israel's government showed remarkable restraint. The United States made no secret during the war on terror that Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein were military targets. Thus, the treatment of Yassin and Rantisi, guilty of similar crimes, should be no different.

With these two men out of the picture, now is the time for Arafat's Palestinian Authority to act in the name of peace. Israel, as Ariel Sharon has made clear, will soon be removing all of its forces from the Gaza Strip. With the Hamas leadership decimated, a power vacuum has been created. A peaceful and moderate Gaza leadership could prove to Israel that handing over the Gaza strip was not a mistake, and it could give the Israeli people the confidence necessary to allow a similar handover in the heart of the West Bank, steps that ultimately will lead to true peace between Israel and Palestine.

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