De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum — But We’ll Make an Exception for the Following

The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, was just the latest. This roundup first appeared here: “The Hamas and Hezbollah leaders killed by Israel since 7 October attack,” by Jason Burke, Guardian, October 17, 2024:

Israel on Thursday confirmed the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the 7 October 2023 attacks….

Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chair of Hamas’s guiding council and founding member, was killed in Beirut by a suspected Israeli air strike in January 2024. The 57-year-old was accused of running Hamas military operations in the occupied West Bank, and playing a key role in the group’s financial networks….

In March this year, an airstrike killed Marwan Issa, a senior military commander and one of the closed circle who had known of the 7 October attack plan….

In July, a massive Israeli airstrike in al-Mawasi, a supposedly safe humanitarian zone in Gaza, killed Mohammed Deif, Sinwar’s closest aide….

The Guardian here implies that Israel violated the sanctity of the “safe humanitarian zone.” Deif’s involvement in the killings of Israeli civilians is not a matter of concern for them.

Fuad Shukr, a founder member of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Iran-backed militia, was killed by an air strike on July 30. Shukr, 63, had been involved in the massive suicide bombings launched against US, French and Israeli targets in 1983….

A day later, Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas’s guiding council, died when a bomb exploded in his bedroom in a government guesthouse in Tehran….

The killings of Shukr and Haniyeh were denounced by some in the West as an “escalation” by the IDF that would lead ineluctably to a major regional war. But the current “escalation” in violence between the Jewish state and those who, headed by Iran, wish to destroy it and replace it with a 23rd Arab state, began on October 7, with the torture, rape, and murder of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas and the kidnapping of 251 Israelis who were taken back to Gaza. These two assassinations — of Shukr and Haniyeh — and the killing of Muhammad Deif contributed to restoring Israel’s deterrence posture, and like the killings of these other jihad leaders, have been a boon to the Western world whose wellbeing is threatened by the Islamic Republic and its proxies.

In September, Hassan Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was killed by Israel in a series of strikes on the group’s underground headquarters in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut….

In his speech urbi et orbi on September 19, 2024, eight days before he was killed, Nasrallah admitted that Israel’s “pager attack” had been a heavy blow, but he vowed to fight on. Nasrallah said that Israel’s attack had crossed a “red line.” In fact, Israel’s sabotage of electronics, he said indignantly, was “an act of war.”

An act of war? I would have thought that what happened on October 7 was an “act of war.” That was the day when 6,000 Hanas operatives crashed through fences into Israel and proceeded to torture, rape, mutilate, and kill 1,200 Israelis and kidnap another 250. That was an “act of war” by Hamas. But a day later, when Hezbollah started lobbing hundreds of rockets into Israel in an act of solidarity with Hamas, that, too, was an “act of war.” And Hezbollah has been attacking Israel since October 8, 2023, launching more than 7,500 rockets, missiles, and drones since that date. Weren’t those many “acts of war,” or should we see them as one long, continuous, devastating “act of war”?

On August 25, 2024, Hezbollah was readying a major attack on a dozen of Israel’s military bases and on Unit 8200 and Mossad headquarters, which are both in north Tel Aviv. The attack was supposed to be retribution for the assassination by the IDF of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander. But the initial attack was foiled when Israel launched a preemptive strike a few hours before Hezbollah had intended to strike. All of those attacks Hezbollah had planned on military targets were thwarted; no rockets or drones hit central Israel. Despite the IDF’s preemptive strike, Hezbollah managed to launch more than 320 rockets and several dozen attack drones against Israeli civilian centers. They were either intercepted or fell harmlessly in open fields. The IDF performed better. Hezbollah is still a powerful force, but with the deaths of Nasrallah and others, its command structure has now been decimated.

The God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. In light of this list, I don’t think becoming a high-ranking operative in Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a wise career move.

There are, of course, many more Hamas and Hezbollah commanders, just below the very top echelon, who have also been killed. And there some Mossad operations that are still not known to the world and may never be known, as Israel fights its long shadow war against the terrorists of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hezbollah, and smaller groups that hope to destroy the Jewish state. Since October 7, 2023, the Israelis have taken to heart a lesson from the Talmud: “If someone is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”