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Michael L.Gross Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law
Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence? Journal of Applied Philosophy, 23.3 (2006):
323-335. This
article is available to subscribers at: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1747-7093.2006.00043.x The
author has made available a pre-print of this article at his homepage: http://poli.haifa.ac.il/~mgross/Michael
Gross Publications Bioethics and Warfare.htm Abstract During the current round of fighting in the Middle East, Israel
has provoked considerable controversy as it turned to targeted killings or
assassination to battle militants. While assassination has met with disfavour
among traditional observers, commentators have, more recently, sought to
justify targeted killings with an appeal to both self-defence and law
enforcement. While each paradigm allows the use of lethal force, they are
fundamentally incompatible, the former stipulating moral innocence and the
latter demanding the presumption of criminal guilt. Putting aside the
paradigm of law enforcement which demands due process and forbids
extra-judicial execution, the only possible avenue for justifying named
killings lies in self-defence. While named killings might be defensible on
the grounds that there are no other ways to disable combatants when they
fight without uniforms, the costs, including the cost of targeted killing
emerging as an acceptable convention in its own right, should be sufficient
to view the practice with a good deal of caution. |