{"id":1625,"date":"2025-06-18T10:30:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2025-06-18T10:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:33:07","slug":"from-the-middle-east-to-america-history-shows-you-cannot-assassinate-your-way-to-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/from-the-middle-east-to-america-history-shows-you-cannot-assassinate-your-way-to-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"from the Middle East to America, history shows you cannot assassinate your way to peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

In the late 1960s, the prevailing opinion<\/a> among Israeli Shin Bet intelligence officers was that the key to defeating the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was to assassinate its then-leader Yasser Arafat.<\/p>\n

The elimination of Arafat, the Shin Bet commander Yehuda Arbel wrote in his diary<\/a>, was \u201ca precondition to finding a solution to the Palestinian problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

For other, even more radical Israelis \u2013 such as the ultra-nationalist assassin Yigal Amir \u2013 the answer lay elsewhere. They sought the assassination of Israeli leaders such as Yitzak Rabin<\/a> who wanted peace with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Despite Rabin\u2019s long personal history as a famed and often ruthless military commander in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars, Amir stalked and shot Rabin dead in 1995. He believed Rabin had betrayed Israel by signing the Oslo Accords peace deal with Arafat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been 20 years since Arafat died as possibly the victim of polonium poisoning<\/a>, and 30 years after the shooting of Rabin. Peace between Israelis and the Palestinians has never been further away.<\/p>\n

What Amnesty International<\/a> and a United Nations Special Committee<\/a> have called genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza have spilled over into Israeli attacks on the prominent leaders of its enemies in Lebanon<\/a> and, most recently, Iran.<\/p>\n

Since its attacks on Iran began on Friday, Israel has killed<\/a> numerous military and intelligence leaders, including Iran\u2019s intelligence chief, Mohammad Kazemi<\/a>; the chief of the armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri<\/a>; and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami<\/a>. At least nine Iranian nuclear scientists<\/a> have also been killed.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We got their chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Iran, predictably, has responded with deadly missile attacks<\/a> on Israel.<\/p>\n

Far from having solved the issue of Middle East peace, assassinations continue to pour oil on the flames.<\/p>\n

A long history of extra-judicial killings<\/h2>\n

Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman\u2019s book Rise and Kill First<\/a> argues assassinations have long sat at the heart of Israeli politics.<\/p>\n

In the past 75 years, there have been more than 2,700 assassination operations<\/a> undertaken by Israel. These have, in Bergman\u2019s words, attempted to \u201cstop history\u201d and bypass \u201cstatesmanship and political discourse\u201d.<\/p>\n

This normalisation of assassinations has been codified in the Israeli expression of \u201cmowing the grass\u201d. This is, as historian Nadim Rouhana<\/a> has shown, a metaphor for a politics of constant assassination. Enemy \u201cleadership and military facilities must regularly be hit in order to keep them weak.\u201d<\/p>\n

The point is not to solve the underlying political questions at issue. Instead, this approach aims to sow fear, dissent and confusion among enemies.<\/p>\n

Thousands of assassination operations have not, however, proved sufficient to resolve the long-running conflict between Israel, its neighbours and the Palestinians. The tactic itself is surely overdue for retirement.<\/p>\n

Targeted assassinations elsewhere<\/h2>\n

Israel has been far from alone in this strategy of assassination and killing.<\/p>\n

Former US President Barack Obama<\/a> oversaw the extra-judicial killing of Osama Bin Laden, for instance.<\/p>\n

After what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch denounced as a flawed trial<\/a>, former US President George W. Bush<\/a> welcomed the hanging of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as \u201can important milestone on Iraq\u2019s course to becoming a democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Current US President Donald Trump<\/a> oversaw the assassination of Iran\u2019s leader of clandestine military operations, Qassem Soleimani<\/a>, in 2020.<\/p>\n

More recently, however, Trump appears to have baulked at granting Netanyahu permission to kill Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s worth noting the US Department of Justice last year brought charges<\/a> against an Iranian man who said he\u2019d been tasked with killing Trump.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia<\/a>, it\u2019s common for senior political and media opponents to be shot in the streets. Frequently they also \u201cfall\u201d out of high windows, are killed in plane crashes or succumb to mystery \u201cillnesses\u201d.<\/p>\n

A poor record<\/h2>\n

Extra-judicial killings, however, have a poor record as a mechanism for solving political problems.<\/p>\n

Cutting off the hydra\u2019s head has generally led to its often immediate replacement<\/a> by another equally or more ideologically committed person, as has already happened in Iran. Perhaps they too await the next round of \u201cmowing the grass\u201d.<\/p>\n

But as the latest Israeli strikes in Iran and elsewhere show, solving the underlying issue is rarely the point.<\/p>\n

In situations where finding a lasting negotiated settlement would mean painful concessions or strategic risks, assassinations prove simply too tempting. They circumvent the difficulties and complexities of diplomacy while avoiding the need to concede power or territory.<\/p>\n

As many have concluded<\/a>, however, assassinations have never killed resistance. They have never killed the ideas and experiences that give birth to resistance in the first place.<\/p>\n

Nor have they offered lasting security to those who have ordered the lethal strike.<\/p>\n

Enduring security requires that, at some point, someone grasp the nettle and look to the underlying issues.<\/p>\n

The alternative is the continuation of the brutal pattern of strike and counter-strike for generations to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This article written by Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University<\/strong> and is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University In the late 1960s, the prevailing opinion among Israeli Shin Bet intelligence officers was that the key to defeating the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was to assassinate its then-leader Yasser Arafat. The elimination of Arafat, the Shin Bet commander Yehuda Arbel wrote in his diary, was \u201ca […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":1626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[222,319,310,327,324,313,312,163,331,329,325,320,314,321,330,328,317,316,322,318,169,326,311,323,315],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-extra-judicial-killings","tag-flinders-university","tag-hossein-salami","tag-irgc-commanders-killed","tag-israel-assassinations","tag-matt-fitzpatrick","tag-middle-east-conflict","tag-middle-east-peace-process","tag-mohammad-bagheri","tag-mohammad-kazemi","tag-mossad-operations","tag-oslo-accords","tag-palestinian-leadership","tag-political-violence","tag-qassem-soleimani-assassination","tag-rise-and-kill-first","tag-ronen-bergman","tag-shin-bet","tag-targeted-killings","tag-the-conversation","tag-us-drone-strikes","tag-yasser-arafat-assassination","tag-yigal-amir","tag-yitzhak-rabin-assassination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}