Israel’s targeted killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah generated a mixed response in the international community. Many Western leaders applauded Nasrallah’s death but called for restraint. Supporters of Hezbollah, meanwhile, denounced his death as murder. Notably absent from his detractors, though, are cries that Israel violated international law.
Simply put, Nasrallah’s targeted killing was entirely within the bounds of international law and both sides know it.
Israel’s elimination of Nasrallah, one of the most hunted terrorist leaders for decades, saved lives. President Joe Biden declared the attack as a “a measure of justice for his many victims.” Vice President Kamala Harris also praised the attack, calling Nasrallah “a terrorist with American blood on his hands” who “destabilized the Middle East and led to the killing of countless innocent people in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and around the world.” The White House released a statement affirming that “The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Israel derives its authority to strike at Hezbollah’s leadership from its “inherent right” to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. International law extends “self-defense” to pre-empting “imminent threats” of attack. Hezbollah’s continued barrage of rocket fire against northern Israel falls under that category.
To target Nasrallah, Israel employed the international humanitarian law principle of proportionality, which requires balancing the foreseeable civilian harm—particularly when the target embeds itself in populated civilian areas as Nasrallah had done—and the expected military advantage based on the knowledge available prior to initiating an attack.
To exercise the principle of distinction by distinguishing between civilians and combatants, in the week prior to eliminating Nasrallah, Israeli military officials warned Lebanese civilians who were living in the path of the target. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt. Col. Avihai Adrei sent a message in Arabic with a map marking the area from which they must evacuate and called on the residents of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to leave their homes “urgently.” The message specifically stated, “Hezbollah’s actions are forcing the IDF to act against terrorist infrastructure in your villages. … If you are in or near a house containing Hezbollah weapons, you must leave it and move away from it within two hours, a distance of no less than 1,000 meters outside the village.” The message concluded, “Anyone who is near Hezbollah’s people, their facilities, and their weapons is putting their lives and the lives of their family members at risk.”
On September 27, before commencing the targeted killing of Nasrallah, Adrei again called on the residents in Arabic to immediately evacuate Dahieh, the Beirut neighborhood and Hezbollah stronghold where Israel targeted Nasrallah. “You are near properties of the terrorist organization Hezbollah and for your own safety you are forced to evacuate immediately from the buildings and stay away from them at a distance of 500 meters,” he said. Whether civilians heeded the warning has no bearing on the legality of Israel’s actions.
With the weight of the law on Israel’s side, the usual suspects among Israel’s critics, such as Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have been silent. Those who wring their hands show themselves to be terror sympathizers who prioritize support for Hezbollah over any fair reading of international law.
Indeed, this was the case with Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, who stated, “They want to justify it, but to assassinate him, they attacked buildings, housing estates and killed hundreds of people. There’s a word for this: crime.” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani likewise condemned the killing of Nasrallah as “a crime that shows the Zionist entity has crossed all the red lines.”
If there is a silver lining to international organizations’ polemics and piling on against Israel, it is that Nasrallah’s death shows there is a limit to the intellectual somersaults in which they engage to blame the Jewish state. Hezbollah’s violations of the rules of war were simply too glaring, documented, and long-standing, and Israel’s response has been legal, justified, and humane. Israel is winning, and the usual naysayers realize the only thing they have to lose with their continued apologia is their own credibility.
