Israeli Lives Aren’t Cheap
Seth Mandel for Commentary
In the 2004 Israeli movie Walk on Water, a Mossad agent played by Lior Ashkenazi is tasked with tracking down and eliminating an aging Nazi in Germany. In trying to understand the decision to prioritize killing an evil but elderly man, he asks his boss: “Get him before God does?” To which his boss responds: “Yes, get him before God does.”
Ismail Haniyeh was not yet an old man, and his earthly punishment, too, has come before his heavenly penance. Israel’s reported assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran last night will be mourned by the terrible people of the world. Media reaction has followed its predictable nature. Reuters called him a “moderate” in an article republished by Voice of America. Most other press reaction has consolidated behind the idea that the strike will sabotage ceasefire talks.
The more important lesson, however, is the one expressed in the Walk on Water scene above: Jewish blood is no longer cheap. There is a price to be paid for taking Jewish life. Most of the time, this is interpreted through the lens of Israel’s enemies—that is, as a threat. But more important is what this reality says to citizens of Israel. To them, it’s a promise.
This is the value of being a citizen of Israel, and it cannot be underestimated. It is the same value behind the constant search for a hostage deal. The Israel that took out Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran is the Israel that agrees to lopsided trades to bring its captives home, one at a time if necessary. No matter how communal its practices or collectivist its apportionment of responsibility for the rest of the nation, Judaism has never stopped valuing every individual life.
Those who worry about the fate of a ceasefire deal should be encouraged by Haniyeh’s date with destiny. There are different ways to protect Jewish life, and Israel takes each opportunity when it presents itself.
That does not just go for Jewish citizens of Israel, needless to say. The day before Haniyeh’s elimination, Israel killed Fuad Shukr in a targeted strike on Beirut. Shukr had two prominent claims to fame: He was responsible for the massacre of a dozen Druze children in northern Israel last week, and he was behind the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that killed 241 Americans. There was a $5 million reward on his head from the U.S. government.
Which means that 40 years and nine months after he helped kill 241 Americans, Shukr was still a wanted man. Four days after he helped kill 12 Druze, he was a dead man.
There are surely reasons the U.S. chose not to take out Shukr when it could. But still, there is something counterfeit in the U.S. government putting a bounty on the head of a man no other Americans could reach and then letting him live on—and on and on. As if the vows of retribution were for show.
But such retribution isn’t only for the victims. It is also for those who still live. Shukr ended his life as Hezbollah’s most-senior military commander and a trusted aide to leader Hassan Nasrallah. After the Marine barracks bombing, he spent four decades planning the deaths of other innocents. With the Iranian proxy beating the drums of war, Israel understood its appeals to rationality were falling on deaf Hezbollah ears. But a targeted strike on a top military commander might—might—slow the banging of those drums a bit, if only because of the practical considerations of losing the man most responsible for guiding that war, if indeed one broke out.
Regarding Hamas, the U.S. has been begging the terror group’s operational leader, Yahya Sinwar, to accept the terms of the ceasefire as laid out by President Biden. If Haniyeh’s opinion of the deal mattered, it certainly didn’t show. Perhaps a vivid reminder of Sinwar’s isolation would move things along.
In the end, the elimination of Haniyeh might have no effect one way or the other on the ceasefire deal. But it will certainly effect the perception of whether there are consequences for those who plan and approve the kidnapping and murder of Israelis. That is a fine thing for peace, for order, and for the value of human life—Jewish, Druze, or otherwise.
