Israel’s Targeting of Hamas Commander Marwan Issa Was a Legal Operation

This core rule affirms the immutable principle of “No crime without a punishment.” It can be found, among other valid sources, in the London Charter of August 8, 1945, the founding document of the historic Nuremberg Tribunal. [...] In this connection, it is important to remember that an integral part of all criminal law is the underlying question of mens rea, or “criminal intent.” On this point, there can be no reasonable comparison of Marwan Issa’s deliberate mass murder of Israeli noncombatants and the civilian harms now being suffered in Gaza. [...] Support for a limited right to the targeted killing of “common enemies of humankind” can be found in the classical writings of Aristotle, Plutarch and Cicero as well as in Jewish history. [...] This history ranges from the Sicarii, who flourished at the time of destruction of the Second Temple, to the Lehi, who fought the British mandatory authority after World War II. [...] If Israel had chosen not to target Marwan Issa so as not to injure the sensibilities of “civilized nations” (a phrase codified at Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice), more violence and death would have been inflicted upon many innocent human beings.