Targeted killings are as old as the Bible
IN days of old, targeted killings of the Jewish People’s archenemies either prevented or avenged bloodshed. The hanging of Haman, as recounted in Megillas Esther, averted a genocide, and the Gemara in Gittin recounts the story of a mosquito causing the death of the Roman emperor Titus after he destroyed the second Beis Hamikdash.
During the Middle Ages, constant danger to the Jewish community emerged from within in the form of mosrim, informers. These turncoats often posed existential threats to entire Jewish communities by making slanderous reports to anti-Semitic government officials, who were only too eager to act upon such calumny. That being the case, rabbinical authorities often declared that an informer had the status of a rodef, and a targeted killing of the informer was carried out to save the community from destruction.
The Ri Migash arranged the killing of one such moser in the 12th century, while the Rambam testified that the practice was common in many places where the threat of mosrim existed. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Rabbeinu Yonah of Giron, the Rashba, and the Rosh all related stories of their direct involvement in the execution of mosrim, which saved Jewish communities from certain catastrophe.
Almost since its inception, the State of Israel has responded to threats posed by leading terrorists with targeted killings, saving or avenging numerous Jewish lives. Perhaps the most famous of these operations was undertaken by the Mossad following the murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Over the next 16 years, Mossad operatives, working in countries around the world, assassinated terrorists and leaders of the Black September organization, as well as key members of the PLO, in retaliation for the Munich massacre. Those actions crippled the Black September organization and severely curtailed terrorist activities against Israelis abroad.
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