He who lives by the sword…

I am quite unequivocally against the killing of all people. Period.
Recently, we have learned that extremists among the Israeli settlers, including some of their so-called Rabbis have been threatening to kill Ariel Sharon if he should order any evacuation of settlements from the occupied territories. (An eery echo of what happened to Rabin. Therefore, a threat to be taken seriously.)
I am totally against the killing or harming in any way of Ariel Sharon. By anyone, from whatever side.
But I have to note that in recent years Ariel Sharon has participated in and spearheaded a policy that has quite intentionally and deliberately undertaken the killing of at least another 149 of God’s children, with considerable additional deaths caused “collaterally” in those operations.

[From B’tselem’s statistics for the period Sept. 29, 2000 through June 30, 2004: “At least 149 of the Palestinians killed were extrajudicially executed by Israel, 90 of them in assassinations carried out by the Israel Air Force and 59 of them in assassinations carried out by ground forces. In the course of these assasinations 100 additional Palestinians were killed, 90 of them minors.”]

So okay, because of that stunning and atrocious record, I admit I felt tempted to say when I heard of the threats against Sharon’s life, “Well, he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” But that is fatalistic and inhumane. Even Sharon is capable of grace, capable of an inner transformation.
Actually, Rabin was a good example of that. From Mr. “Break their bones” in 1988 to Mr. “Oslo Accords signer” just five years later.
Yossi Alpher, an Israeli friend with whom I have discussed war and peace issues intermittently for the past 15 years, has a new article in the New-York-based Jewish weekly, Forward, about the threats against Sharon.
In it, he warns:

The settlers’ success in defeating the Likud referendum early last May merely whetted their appetite for protest…
If, heaven forbid, [Sharon] were to be murdered by a fellow Jew, the assassination of a second Israeli leader seemingly bent on rolling back the settlement movement probably would mark the end of attempts to remove settlements or otherwise restrict Israel’s territorial reach in the West Bank and Gaza. The fanatics would have succeeded once and for all in determining both Israel’s national territorial agenda and its ethno-political nature.

He asks:

Why aren’t the rabbis and settlers who threaten violence and murder against their fellow Jews– or for that matter, against anybody*– in jail? Why can Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl, rabbi of Jerusalem’s Old City and scion of a distinguished Zionist family, go to the illegal Givat HaRoeh outpost on June 29 and pronounce “din rodef“– a rabbinic verdict of “pursuer,” pronounced against someone who threatens another’s life and considered tantamount to a death sentence– upon anyone who delivers parts of Eretz Yisrael to the goyim, and get away with it? How can Uri Elitzur, a settler from Ofra who administered prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in the late 1990s, openly advocate two weeks ago that settlers use violence against soldiers and police who seek to remove them, and not even be interrogated?
Because not only do the inciters’ fellow ideological settlers condone their remarks– even as they tut-tut about avoiding the kind of fraternal strife that brought down the Second Temple– but the pragmatic secular mainstream seemingly fears to touch the extremists, ostensibly lest it trigger the very escalation of violence that is already being visited upon its leaders…
[V]irtually everyone on the political, legal and security scene seems to back off when it is a rabbi who is invoking religious law to justify political murder.
Thus it was during the fateful months that led up to the Rabin assassination. Thus it was during the investigation that followed the assassination. Thus it appears to be now– until the next assassination.

His argument got me to thinking about the 149 targeted killings “successfully” undertaken by the Israeli “security” forces since November 2000.
What is the process whereby people are put on that “to kill” list?
Of course, it is all done in top-secret places, far away from any “due process”, any public knowledge, any media coverage, and any judicial oversight.
How can the people–presumably government officials–who participate in that ultra-secret Star Chamber even live with themselves thereafter?
B’tselem–the Israeli human rights organization whose name means “in the image” [of G-d]– has a fairly workmanlike 14-page position paper on the assassinations policy. It contains some interesting testimonies from witnesses of these operations.
The paper also notes that:

Israeli law guarantees this right in its Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. According to article 2 of the law: “There shall be no violation of the life, body or dignity of any person as such.” Article 4 states that “All persons are entitled to protection of their life, body and dignity.” The Supreme Court has acknowledged this right as supreme over other rights. Thus, for example, Justice Cheshin ruled that “The right to life and all that sustains it– the right to breathe, the right to drink, the right to eat– is the mother of all rights. It is the essence of humankind.” Justice Strasberg-Cohen ruled that “There are basic rights, such as the right to life and dignity, which are not to be violated or denied even those who are not citizens or residents of the country.”
The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty does permit violation of the rights it guarantees, but only “by a law befitting the values of the State of Israel, enacted for a proper purpose, and to an extent no greater than is required, or by regulation enacted by virtue of express authorization in such law.” Israel’s assassination policy does not comply with even one of the conditions included in the above article and is therefore illegal.

(Go to the downloadable version of the whole paper for the sources for those quotes.)
The paper then notes the sacredness of the right to life in various international-law instruments to which Israel is a signatory. This section concludes:

In the case of Israel’s assassination policy, the State deprives a human being of his or her life without legal sanction, the legal opinion that allegedly permits such a policy is not made public, the decision to take such action is made in the back rooms of the security services and the assassination is carried out with no judicial process. Such a policy constitutes an arbitrary violation of the right to life and a severe violation of international law.

None of this is legal-theory rocket-science, by the way. (Ouch. Horribly inappropriate metaphor in the circumstances. I’m really sorry.)
It doesn’t need to be rocket-science, though. “Thou shalt not kill.” How hard is that? Oh, did I mention that in its normal legal code, Israel, “doesn’t have capital punishment”?
The B’tselem paper also notes that, since there is no basis in legal regulation for carrying out these assassinations, the question of who gets onto the “to kill” list is almost inevitably fuzzy and open to virtually limitless expansion. It talks explicitly about the “Danger of the slippery slope.”:

Once the assassination of individuals suspected of carrying out dangerous acts is accepted as a legitimate way of dealing with attacks against Israeli citizens or soldiers, the only remaining question is who to assassinate. However, it is almost impossible to form guidelines that clearly distinguish between those considered legitimate targets and those who do not pose a sufficient threat to warrant targeting. As it is, there is always the fear that in carrying out the policy a wider circle of people will be killed.
Officials who have spoken about this policy have deliberately avoided a clear definition of who they consider legitimate targets. Prime Minister Ehud Barak said: “We will strike against anyone who hurts us. We have the ability to do so.” According to a report in Ha’aretz newspaper, “The rule is that we take action as a preventive measure; i.e., against those who continue to carry out attacks.” According to another report quoting a senior official in the security forces: “We strike against terrorists who set out to shoot at settlements, single out heads of terrorist cells and regional leaders and strike at them.”
These vague definitions allow Israel to strike at a wide variety of people who hold varying degrees of responsibility. In recent months the definition of victims considered legitimate targets was expanded at least once. According to reports in the press, the assassination of Thabat Thabat on December 31, 2000, was carried out following an explicit order by Prime Minister Ehud Barak to expand the circle of people whom it is legitimate to assassinate “so that it will also include high ranking individuals and officials in the Palestinian Authority […] people belonging to the official branches of the Palestinian Authority who are involved in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks and whom Israel has thus far avoided hurting” will become legitimate targets.
And indeed, if killing those who “set out to shoot at settlements” is justified, is it not, following the same logic, justified to kill the person who came up with the idea to shoot? And what of those who raise funds for the organization responsible for the shooting? By the same token it would be legitimate to take action against political activists who do not directly attack Israelis but support and encourage those who do, or against Palestinians who throw stones at settlements every day and harm their inhabitants.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but history shows otherwise. The Landau Commission allowed the use of physical force during GSS interrogations and sought to limit its use. Yet, torturing Palestinian detainees quickly became routine and was used against hundreds of people every year. Torture was not strictly limited to “ticking bomb” situations or even to people suspected of harming Israelis. The GSS routinely tortured political activists, students suspected of Islamic tendencies, brothers and other relatives of those who were marked “wanted” people whose professions theoretically made them capable of manufacturing bombs, Palestinians whom the GSS wanted to enlist as collaborators– the list is nearly endless. The torture ceased only after the Supreme Court ordered the GSS to stop using these interrogation methods.

Assassinations? ‘Targeted killings’? Extra-judicial executions? No matter what you call them, they still have almost exactly the same lack of moral savor and the same shocking lack of any possible legality as the “people hunts” that Wladyslaw Szpilman described as happening in the Warsaw ghetto under the Nazis.