Comparing Targeted Killings and Terrorism (Haaretz – 2001)

A response to Rogel Alpher’s column in Haaretz of Monday (15.1.2001).

Alpher addresses the execution of collaborators in the Palestinian Authority and argues that television may indeed vividly convey the horror, but it does not permit a deeper inquiry into the grounds of that revulsion. It seems to me that Alpher, in his very remarks—ironically presented as a thought experiment—showed that in the written press as well, the inquiry remains flat and superficial. Since these arguments keep recurring on various platforms, let me try to do what Alpher himself calls for, that is, to put our thoughts on this subject in some order, both morally and intellectually (the two planes to which Alpher also refers).

As for his claim regarding Israelis’ double standard—that we would denounce Israeli collaborators as traitors, yet are horrified by the execution of collaborators.

First, there is a simple mistake here on the intellectual plane. It seems to me that he, like many others, confuses moral revulsion with national solidarity. Denouncing people as traitors is not a moral judgment but a legal and national one. Udi Adiv was not necessarily a moral wrongdoer, but a person who acted against the law. In his case, the law derived from the interests of Israeli society and not from moral rules, and therefore he had to be punished. Considerations of survival are no less legitimate than moral considerations. Second, on the moral plane, there is a simple difference between denouncing traitors and butchering people before a jubilant crowd (both from the standpoint of the killers and of those gloating over it).

A second point concerns the analogy between our targeted killings and the executions there, an analogy being drawn by many these days, though it is certainly not a good one, either intellectually or morally.

If we were executing—and certainly in public, and certainly as entertainment for a jubilant crowd—a person who was in the hands of our law-enforcement authorities, that is, someone whom we also had the option of dealing with within the accepted legal framework, then the analogy would be complete. The problem is that these criminals and murderers are not in our hands, nor are they extradited to us; and on the other hand, they are not punished by the Palestinian Authority and are even backed by it. What, according to those critics, were we supposed to do? Perhaps try them in absentia in the International Court in The Hague, and wait for them to murder us all until the sentence is carried out?

It is true that such a situation requires extremely cautious handling, and certainly innocents may also be harmed; however, there are situations in which we have no choice, for the reasons listed above. It seems to me that at least in this respect, our present situation resembles a state of war. Even someone who does not agree that the situation in which we currently find ourselves is indeed one of no choice, and who therefore rejects targeted killings, must still agree that there is no room for the comparison drawn by Alpher and others like him, either morally or intellectually.

It seems to me that universalist arguments, such as Alpher’s, conceal behind them not only an intellectual error but also a lack of national solidarity. On the intellectual plane: is it impossible to understand that when we condemn the harming of Palestinian collaborators, and act against it, this does not necessarily derive from moral considerations, but also from national solidarity and self-interest? Are interests and morality the same thing? Or alternatively, is there something wrong with acting for the sake of interests?

And on the moral plane: is it impossible to understand the difference between executing people who are in the hands of the lawful authorities of some political entity, and targeted killings of those who endanger it from outside, with the backing of the authority in whose territory they are located, when there is no other option? I am baffled.