"If only Israel could fight all its battles this way."

"It would be the cleanest and least-deadly war in the history of warfare. Even some of Israel’s harshest critics should understand that."

Michael Totten, on the successful op against Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh:

Hamas and Hezbollah use civilians as human shields. Hezbollah uses an entire country as a vast human shield. Some critics, for various reasons, are more interested in lambasting Israel than the terrorist organizations it’s fighting. That’s easy when you live in New York or Brussels. People in the Middle East have to live with (or die because of) what happens. How Middle Easterners fight wars isn’t political or academic to me. I’ve never been inside Gaza, but I once lived in Lebanon, I travel there regularly, and there’s a real chance I’ll be there when the next war pops off. I’d rather not be used as a human shield if that’s OK with those who give Hamas and Hezbollah a pass. And I’d much rather read about Hezbollah leaders getting whacked by mysterious assassins with forged passports than dive into a Beirut bomb shelter during Israeli air raids.

Me too. Read the rest. I get the certain people are vexed that the Israelis didn't follow some sort of protocol, and used forged passports when they decided to successfully take out, without any collateral damage at all, a man whose organization of unrepentant war criminals who deliberately target civilians, among other things, but I fail to see what rules were really broken here, except the rule that seems to be increasingly the norm, in certain circles, per the Goldstone Report, that it is a war crime for sovereign nations to defend their territory, but not a war crime to attack said territory.

I mean, maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't think so...

ADDED: I understand that Australians are not pleased that forged Aussie passports were used, but my argument still stands.

AND: Alan Dershowitz wrestles with the question, and comes to pretty much the same place as Totten does.