A New Threat of Terrorism: Gaza and The West Bank

Since 1948, the Gaza Strip had swelled with displaced Palestinians, becoming a political powder keg. In the squalid camps, movements were forming among young, disaffected Palestinians. Among the militants was al-Wazir, who by the age of 18 had 200 men under his command, and carried out sabotage and murder operations inside Israel.

The Egyptians sent in reinforcements from Cairo to support him, among them, an engineering student named Yasser Arafat.

By 1959, Arafat and al-Wazir, who was now known as Abu Jihad, were a formidable team — Arafat the leader, Abu Jihad the operations mastermind. On October 10, they founded the Palestinian Liberation Movement, or Fatah.

It took a while for the Mossad to take note of them. It was only in 1964 that the first field report on the organization was submitted. “These two,” the agent wrote, “are capable of inspiring the Palestinians to act against us.”

Yasser Arafat worked on the political front, establishing relationships with leaders of the Arab states. In 1964, the Arab states established the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the PLO), which Fatah gradually took over until Arafat was elected its chairman in 1969.

The Mossad issued orders to eliminate Arafat and Abu Jihad using letter bombs. The plan failed — all the bombs were intercepted.

As attacks intensified through 1967, Israel faced mounting unrest and public morale sank. Then, on June 5, 1967, the Six Day War broke out. By the end of the war, Israel was in control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. This was a significant victory for Israel, but Arafat and Abu-Jihad saw the new state of affairs as a situation to be exploited.

Just ten days after the war ended, Abu Jihad launched a wave of terror attacks in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel was determined to eliminate Arafat, now the face of the Palestinian struggle. Not long after the war ended, an informant revealed his hideout in the Old City of Jerusalem, but Arafat escaped just moments before soldiers got there. Two days later, an agent raided his apartment, but found only a half-eaten pita. The next day, Arafat slipped across the border into Jordan, disguised as a woman.

Fatah’s terror attacks became more frequent and deadly. By March 1968, 65 Israeli soldiers and 50 civilians had been killed. The IDF pressed Prime Minister Levi Eshkol for a large-scale military response, but he hesitated. In January 1968, the Mossad came up with a plan to ship a car to Jordan, where Arafat was now stationed, pack it with explosives, and detonate it remotely outside Arafat’s house. Eshkol refused to green-light the operation.

The terror persisted. On March 18, a school bus hit a landmine, killing ten children. Eshkol finally agreed that Arafat’s assassination should be a priority. On March 21, 1968, Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s most elite commando unit, was sent to strike a Fatah base and kill Arafat.

But things went very wrong.

Thick vegetation held up the troops, and they arrived later than expected. Helicopters had already dropped warnings to civilians to evacuate the area, and the element of surprise was lost. Arafat managed to get away on a motorcycle and publicly mocked Israel’s failure.

1972: The Munich Olympics

“We must not only defend ourselves, but also go on the offensive.” —Golda Meir

ON September 5, 1972, the world watched in horror as 11 athletes at the Munich Olympics were led at gunpoint onto a helicopter by the PLO’s Black September group. Israel had pleaded with the German authorities to allow them to conduct a rescue mission, but their requests were flatly denied and they were forced to stand by as the athletes were brutally executed. The horror of the kidnapping, which occurred on German soil less than 20 years after the Holocaust, was a chilling reminder of the ever-present threat to the Jewish People.

On September 11, the Israeli cabinet took a dramatic step, granting the prime minister the authority to approve retaliatory actions against targets even in allied countries like Germany and France.

“Wherever a plot is being hatched,” Meir told the Knesset, “We are committed to striking.”

The Mossad then launched Operation Bayonet in pursuit of those responsible for the Munich massacre.

The first target was Wael Zwaiter, a Palestinian intellectual who lived in Rome. In October 1972, a team was dispatched. Returning to his apartment one evening, Zwaiter didn’t notice the two assassins concealed in the shadows of the stairwell. The operatives drew Beretta pistols and shot Zwaiter seven times. Within hours, they were on a flight back to Israel.

Next, agents targeted Mahmoud Hamshari, a suspected PLO representative in Paris. Disguised as an Italian journalist, an Israeli operative lured Hamshari from his apartment so that explosives experts could plant bombs beneath his telephone. The next day, the “journalist” telephoned Hamshari. When he answered, Mossad detonated the bomb.

This was just the beginning.

The Mossad’s hit list had initially targeted 11 individuals involved in the Munich massacre, but as intelligence poured in, the list expanded to include more PLO operatives across Europe. The Mossad’s aim was broader than just retribution — they wanted to send a message that Israel was not to be trifled with.

Within a year of the Munich massacres, the Mossad had assassinated 14 Palestinian militants. But the top leaders of the PLO remained untouched. These key figures were now sheltering in Beirut, where it was harder to reach them.

1972

“By the time they grasp what’s happened, we’ll be gone.” —Meir Dagan, former IDF general and Mossad director

Operation Spring of Youth

In October 1972, a coded message arrived at intelligence headquarters. It read, “Model requests urgent meeting.” Model was a code name for Clovis Francies, one of the Mossad’s most valuable agents.

A wealthy Lebanese man, he’d been sending encrypted messages since the 1940s to aid Israeli intelligence. He never asked for payment, he said, because “I saw the Palestinians’ activities in Lebanon as a great danger to my country.”

Three days after sending his message, Model was ferried via dinghy to Haifa. There, he met with top Mossad officers, giving them the home addresses of four top PLO officials in Beirut.

It was an opportunity too good to miss.

But this was no ordinary mission. The Mossad needed to infiltrate a crowded foreign city, bypass layers of security undetected, eliminate four of the PLO’s top leaders, collect intelligence from and then destroy the PLO’s offices, and vanish without harming civilians or raising alarms. They needed to know every possible detail before making a move.

The Mossad sent a female operative named Yael, code-named Nielsen, to pose as an American who’d come to Lebanon to do research for a TV series she was writing. She rented an apartment directly opposite three of the targets, made friends with locals and foreigners alike, and roamed the city collecting endless details, ostensibly in research for her TV series.

Commando Uri Milstein later described the precision of Yael’s intelligence: “I have never had intelligence this good, not before and not after… we knew everything — about the bodyguards, the concierge, even the neighbors. It was astonishing.”

To pull off the operation, the Mossad turned to Ehud Barak, the future prime minister who, at the time, commanded Sayeret Matkal.

His strategy?

Half the Sayeret Matkal team would be disguised as women. A group of men wandering the streets at night would draw too much attention. But a few couples, arm in arm, might just slip by unnoticed.

Operation Spring of Youth was officially a go.

On the night of April 9, 1973, operatives silently slipped ashore onto a secluded Beirut beach, and slipped into three teams: one to destroy the PLO’s offices, the other two to eliminate key leaders.

Back in Tel Aviv, Mossad head Zvi Zamir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan were in a bunker, monitoring the operation closely.

Some of them in flowered dresses and lipstick, the commandos strolled casually through Beirut’s affluent neighborhood. Barak, later reflecting on that night, marveled at the “city’s beauty.”

The commandos bypassed PLO security, catching them literally asleep. In minutes, the targets were dead. But a guard stirred on the street, and when the Israeli team took him out, a stray bullet hit a car horn, setting off a blaring alarm that woke the neighborhood.

With Lebanese police rushing to the scene, the commandos scrambled to collect as many PLO documents as possible. From her window, Yael witnessed the gunfight that followed. A few bursts of automatic fire later, the Israelis were back in their cars, racing toward the beach.

Across town, another unit raided a PFLP stronghold. But they hadn’t accounted for a second security detail. Before they could breach the building, three soldiers went down. Commander Amnon Lipkin-Shahak pressed on, attaching explosives to the building before the team made a hasty retreat. From the evacuation point, they saw the building collapse in a plume of dust and rubble.

They would find out later that 35 PFLP members had been inside.

The Middle East woke the next day to a different reality. In newspapers and coffee shops, radio broadcasts and living rooms, the Arab world began to grapple with a dawning epiphany. Israel was punching far above its weight. It could strike anywhere, at any time.

The legend of the Mossad was beginning to form.

1979 The Begin Years

In 1977, Israel’s Labor Party faced a crushing defeat at the hands of Likud, the right-wing party led by Menachem Begin, a former Irgun commander.

The years leading up to the election had been marked by relentless violence. The PFLP continued its campaign of terror, carrying out attacks like the massacre at Lod Airport, the murder of 21 students at Maalot High School, and the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 to Entebbe.

Once in power, Begin approved every Mossad operation without hesitation. Though Yasser Arafat was their top target, many in Israeli intelligence believed that assassinating such a prominent figure would be a costly mistake.

Instead, the Mossad turned its sights to their next target: Wadie Haddad, the PFLP cofounder.

He’d been a target for years, but seemed almost untouchable. An RPG fired through his window left him unscathed. A bomb dropped on a stadium in Beirut missed its mark. Striking him at home was complicated — his wife and young children were always present.

Now he lived deep in Beirut, which imposed immense challenges. The Mossad needed a plan that left no traces, didn’t require direct engagement, and guaranteed death.

They found their answer in an unexpected weapon: toothpaste.

For this, they called on “Sadness,” an agent close enough to Haddad to switch his regular toothpaste with an identical tube laced with a slow-acting poison. Over months of diligent use, the toxin would gradually accumulate in his system and ravage his body, without leaving any forensic evidence.

Haddad began wasting away — losing weight, hair, and eventually, blood. His doctors were baffled. They could find no discernible cause for his slow, agonizing decline. Suspicions of poisoning arose, but nothing could be proven. Even the PLO’s appeal to East Germany’s secret service and their top medical experts yielded no answers. Haddad died in agony, and his obituary in the New York Times attributed his death to cancer — a convenient cover for one of Mossad’s subtlest and deadliest operations.

With Haddad gone, the PFLP’s operational capacity collapsed, proving once again that targeted assassinations could be the most efficient, cleanest way to neutralize a threat.

The Mossad’s next target was Ali Salameh, the operations chief of Black September. His assassination was primarily about “settling the Munich account,” as one operative put it, but Salameh had developed a friendship with Walter Ames, a CIA officer stationed in the Middle East. The two men grew close, with the CIA even providing Salameh with equipment to bolster his personal security.

When the Mossad informed Prime Minister Begin of Salameh’s ties to the CIA, he still authorized the assassination. He believed it was crucial to demonstrate that no one, not even someone connected to the Americans, was untouchable.

In 1974, a Mossad operative known as “Agent D” was dispatched to Beirut. Under a false European identity, he booked a room at the Continental Hotel, where Salameh lived. He struck up a conversation with Salameh, and over a long period of time, a relationship developed, Salameh considering “Agent D” to be one of his best friends.

Strangely, the feeling was mutual.

“I considered him at the same time a friend and a mortal enemy,” D said. “It’s not easy. You know, deep down inside, that he must die.”

The Mossad opted for a more direct approach: a car bomb. This was a method the Mossad had never used before. It would take a lot of skill and careful handling before the plan could be put into action.

Agent D carefully mapped out Salameh’s regular route, identifying a parking spot he often used that would be ideal. Then he traveled to Jordan, ostensibly for a vacation, but actually to meet a Mossad team. The agents gave him a large piece of furniture that contained the explosives, and Agent D drove it across two borders, Jordan-Syria and Syria-Lebanon. Border officials asked questions about the furniture, but didn’t inspect it. He was waved through.

Another Mossad agent, Erika Chambers, was smuggled into Lebanon. Chambers would be responsible for activating the bomb at exactly the right moment. Days before the operation, a third agent rigged a car with the explosives “Agent D” had provided and gave Chambers the detonator.

On January 22, 1979, Salameh left home, parking his car in his regular spot. Chambers activated the bomb, and within seconds, the car was a twisted heap of metal. Salameh’s four bodyguards were killed in the blast, and he himself was critically injured. He died in a hospital a short time later.

1987–1993

“The Intifada caused us a lot more political harm than everything that the PLO had succeeded in doing throughout its existence.” — Nahum Admoni, Mossad director

The First Intifada

By 1987, approximately 2.5 million Palestinians lived in the West Bank and Gaza. Their frustration had been growing year after year with overcrowding, poor services, and rampant unemployment. Things were on the brink of exploding.

Then, on December 8, an IDF tank carrier lost control and crashed into a line of cars carrying Palestinian workers into Gaza, killing four and injuring seven. Rumor spread that the accident was Israel’s purposeful revenge for a stabbing that had occurred two days earlier. The funerals of the dead workers turned into mass protests. A wave of demonstrations swept across the West Bank and Gaza, marking the start of a Palestinian uprising.

When rioting mobs hurled rocks at a small detachment of soldiers, who had no crowd dispersal equipment or protective gear, the soldiers responded with gunfire. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed, many more were wounded, and Israel’s international standing plummeted.

Lacking a way to respond to the uprising, Israel turned to the method they knew best: targeted killing. Abu Jihad was now their primary target. The Mossad hoped that by killing Abu Jihad, they could stop the violence.

A plan was laid to assassinate Abu Jihad in his own home in Tunisia.

Six operatives arrived in Tunis on April 14 on four different flights from Europe. They rented three different cars for the operation, paying in cash. Simultaneously, five Israeli missile boats advanced toward Tunisia, stopping 25 miles off the coast. Commandos disembarked in rubber dinghies, landing on an empty beach before quickly being shuttled to waiting vehicles.

As Mossad agents surveilled Abu Jihad’s house through binoculars, they spotted his car arriving shortly after midnight. The team planned to strike at 1:30 a.m., when everyone would be asleep, but after intercepting a phone call, they discovered Abu Jihad had a flight to Baghdad leaving at 3 a.m.

They had no time to spare.

The commandos drove their vehicles closer to the house, and two soldiers, one disguised as a woman, approached. They quickly shot the guard outside and stormed the house.

The noise woke Abu Jihad’s wife, Intisar, who shouted in alarm. Abu Jihad grabbed his pistol from the closet, but before he could react, a commando dressed in black charged into the room, firing. Abu Jihad collapsed.

Abu Jihad’s death was a severe blow to the PLO. But the main motivation for killing him, to dampen the Intifada, failed. If anything, the targeted killing made the waves of protest only grow louder.

While the Intifada continued, Yasser Arafat allowed the establishment of a secret back channel for negotiations with a group of Israeli officials. Eventually, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres became involved in these talks, which were kept confidential, even from Israel’s military leadership. In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, effectively bringing an end to the Intifada.

But the peace the Oslo Accords brought proved to be very temporary.

Focused on operations against the PLO, the Mossad largely overlooked the emergence of a more radical group founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1987. Its charter, published in 1988, called for the total destruction of Israel. Comprised of Intifada leaders disillusioned with the secular PLO, this group would prove to be a much greater ideological and militant threat.

This group was called Hamas.

“This madness must be stopped. Bring me red pages to sign.” — Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister

Suicide Bombers

On April 16, 1993, a car drew alongside two parked buses in a lot near Mehola, in the Jordan Valley, and exploded.

Compared to the damage the attack was intended to cause, the number of casualties was low. A Palestinian from a nearby village was killed, and eight people were lightly wounded. But investigators noted that inside the car were the burnt remains of its driver, and gas cylinders were used as an explosive weapon.

This was a suicide bomber.

Sheikh Yassin had developed a doctrine of suicide attacks, promising followers eternal paradise if they killed themselves for their glorious cause. Thus a wave of suicide bombings began inside Israel. In 11 months, more than 100 Israelis were killed, and over 1,000 wounded.

The Hamas operations inspired other terrorist groups. On January 22, 1995, an Islamic Jihad (IJO) terrorist wearing an IDF uniform pushed into a crowd of soldiers at the Beit Lid Junction bus stop and detonated 22 pounds of explosives. When others ran to help the wounded, a second bomber blew himself up. Twenty-one soldiers and one civilian were killed in the attack, and another 66 wounded.

Prime Minister Rabin came to view the scene after the blast, taking in the sight of the junction littered with body parts and stained with blood. “This madness must be stopped,” he said. “Bring me red pages to sign.”

The first target identified by intelligence was Abu-Ali Rida, a Hezbollah commander in Nabatiyeh, Lebanon. After two weeks of surveillance, an operation was set in motion. Rida attended a weekly meeting in Beirut. The plan was that a drone would track his vehicle before an Apache helicopter launched a missile strike.

On March 30, 1995, the drone spotted Rida’s car moving south, and the Apache helicopter fired, destroying the vehicle. Within hours, Hezbollah radio reported Rida’s death.

This operation marked a significant shift in tactics, utilizing a drone to eliminate a target without endangering operatives.

Next, Rabin gave the order to assassinate Yahya Ayyash, a man directly responsible for nine suicide attacks in 1994 and 1995. The Mossad rigged a cell phone with a 50-gram explosive charge with a remotely triggered detonator and found a collaborator who would ensure the phone reached Ayyash. On January 5, 1996, Ayyash’s father called him on the cell phone. Israeli operatives listened in on the call for just enough time to identify Ayyash’s voice and then pressed the trigger. The charge detonated, killing Ayyash instantly.

On July 30, 1997, a Mossad assassination team entered Jordan.

Their target?

Khaled Mashal, Hamas’ deputy leader.

Relations between Israel and Jordan were tense, and it was essential the killing was performed quickly and efficiently, giving the team time to escape the country before they were discovered.

The plan was for the agents to use levofentanyl, an opioid 100 times stronger than morphine, which would act over a period of hours. Death by the drug would look the same as a stroke or heart attack.

The Mossad devised an ingenious method of administering it — a spray. Two agents would approach Meshal on a crowded street. One would spray him with the toxin while the other opened a can of fizzy soda. If anyone saw them, they’d think they were tourists with a soda can.

But as the Mossad agents walked behind Mashal, Mashal’s small daughter ran after him, followed by his driver, Muhammed Abu Seif. When one of the Mossad agents pulled out the canister of poison, the driver caught sight of him and thought he was about to attack.

“Khaled, Khaled!” the driver shouted.

Mashal turned and saw the Mossad agents and the spray canister.

The agents’ cover had been blown.

As they made their getaway, Mashal’s driver, a trained fighter, chased the two agents, jotting down the number plate of their car. When they thought they were far enough from the scene, the agents discarded their car and went on foot. But they didn’t realize Abu Seif had commandeered a car and followed them. Seif tackled one of the agents. As the men struggled, more Jordanians joined the scene, and they dragged the agents to a local police station.

The Mossad operatives had entered the country using fake Canadian passports and were confident their cover would hold. They pretended to be tourists, telling the police they had been suddenly attacked by a mob. But two hours after their arrest, the Canadian consul in Amman appeared at the police station. After asking them some questions about Canada, he told the Jordanians, “I don’t know who they are. Canadians they are not.”

Meanwhile, Mashal began feeling ill and was rushed to a hospital. Hamas quickly accused the Mossad of an assassination attempt, and the Jordanian royal court of being complicit.

King Hussein of Jordan now faced a crisis — if Mashal died, the large Palestinian population in his country could revolt, and there would be demands to execute the captured Israeli agents.

Israel was forced into a difficult decision: let Mashal die and risk losing their agents or provide the antidote to save him and negotiate for their release?

Israel chose the latter, sending the antidote and saving Mashal’s life.

The diplomatic fallout was significant. King Hussein severed ties with Israel and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in exchange for the agents. Israel was put in an awkward diplomatic situation with Canada. And Khaled Mashal recovered fully, going on to lead Hamas for another 13 years.

2000–2005

The Second Intifada

In September 2000, a new wave of violence swept Israel. Angered by Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount, a crowd of thousands of Arabs began to hurl rocks down onto Jews at the Kosel. The violence continued to spread across the West Bank and Gaza, and into the Arab-populated parts of Israel. The local clashes quickly turned into a war.

Hamas took advantage of the unrest to launch even more suicide attacks. By November 2001, there were attacks on the streets of Israel almost every week, and the civilian death toll grew. The next year, 2002, was, according to one Shin Bet chief, “the worst year for terror attacks since the establishment of the state.”

The Mossad continued its tactic of assassinations. Their targets weren’t the suicide bombers themselves, who could easily be replaced, but those involved in recruitment and training.

Until now, the Shin Bet and Mossad’s most sophisticated weapon of assassination had been drones, but now they expanded their capabilities to include guided missiles and aircraft capable of approaching targets closely.

This shift led to a dramatic increase in operational scale, allowing for the execution of four or five targeted hits each day, where previously, it took months to plan just one. The number of targeted assassinations rose from 24 in 2000 to 101 in 2002 and 135 in 2003.

But now Israel could no longer deny its involvement in these operations. The IDF began issuing statements after each strike, justifying the actions taken against their targets. They weren’t just combating terrorists; they were also engaged in a propaganda battle.

2010–2020

“The death of these human beings had a great impact on their nuclear program” —Michael Hayden, former CIA director

Neutralizing the Nuclear Threat

Apart from the threat posed by internal terrorism, Israel has also had to contend with the nuclear threat from its neighbor, Iran. Starting in 2010 until the present day, Israel has made every effort to disrupt Iran’s nuclear project. Part of their method is cyber warfare, using a destructive program to wipe out part of Iran’s centrifuges. Part is physical, destroying Iranian weapons.

But the aspect that has attracted the most attention is the assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientists.

Between 2010 and 2012, four people with links to Iran’s nuclear program were killed by hit men riding motorcycles. In one case, in 2010, an assassin attached a sticky bomb to a car door. In others, gunmen approached vehicles in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and fired through the window before speeding off.

In 2020, the Mossad executed one of its most ambitious operations.

With the approval of President Trump, it was Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s leading nuclear scientist.

Initial reports of the operation were murky. Some claimed a team of assassins waited by the roadside, while others described a violent explosion followed by heavy gunfire. A social media channel linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps suggested a fierce battle between Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards and multiple attackers.

But days later, some Iranian news outlets made an outrageous claim: the assassin was a killer robot controlled remotely.

Iranians ridiculed the story, seeing it as a desperate attempt to shield the elite security force from embarrassment for failing to protect such a high-profile figure.

But this bizarre account was indeed true.

Fakhrizadeh was a complex figure to target. He was always accompanied by convoys of four to seven vehicles of the elite Ansar unit of the Revolutionary Guards, who changed his driving routes and timing to foil possible attacks. And the car he drove himself was rotated among four or five at his disposal.

The Mossad was under pressure to formulate a plan quickly, as the US election was drawing near, and President Trump’s likely successor, Joe Biden, would probably reverse Trump’s policies and withdraw support from any planned assassination.

The Mossad decided to use a completely new method: a killer robot that could be fired without any operatives present. The robot was built to fit in the bed of a Zamyad pickup truck, a common model in Iran. The heavy equipment was then broken down into its smallest possible parts and smuggled into the country piece by piece, then secretly reassembled in Iran. Cameras pointing in multiple directions were mounted onto the pickup truck to give the command room a full picture not just of the target and his security detail, but of the surrounding environment. Finally, the truck was packed with explosives so it could be blown to bits after the kill, destroying all evidence.

A challenge they faced was how to determine in real time that it was Mr. Fakhrizadeh driving the car and not one of his children, his wife, or a bodyguard. Israel lacks the surveillance capabilities in Iran that it has in other places, like Gaza, where it uses drones to identify a target before a strike.

The solution was to station a fake disabled car, resting on a jack with a wheel missing, at a junction on the main road where vehicles had to make a U-turn, some three quarters of a mile from the kill zone. That vehicle contained another camera.

At dawn on Friday, November 27, 2020, the operation was put into motion.

Israeli officials gave the Americans a final heads up. Then, shortly before 3:30 p.m., Fakhrizadeh’s motorcade arrived at the U-turn on Firuzkouh Road. He was positively identified by the operators, who could also see his wife sitting beside him. The convoy turned right on Imam Khomeini Boulevard, and the lead car then zipped ahead to Fakhrizadeh’s house to inspect it before the Fakhrizadehs arrived. Its departure left Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s car fully exposed.

The convoy slowed down for a speed bump just before the parked Zamyad pickup. A stray dog began crossing the road. The machine gun on the truck fired a burst of bullets, hitting the front of the car below the windshield. It’s not clear if these shots hit Mr. Fakhrizadeh, but the car swerved and came to a stop.

The robotic shooter adjusted the sights and fired another burst, hitting the windshield at least three times and Mr. Fakhrizadeh at least once in the shoulder. He stepped out of the car and crouched behind the open front door.

Fakhrizadeh’s wife ran out of the car to her husband. “They want to kill me and you must leave,” Fakhrizadeh told her.

According to Iran’s Fars News, three more bullets tore into his spine. Fakhrizadeh collapsed on the road.

The first bodyguard, Hamed Asghari, a national judo champion, arrived from a chase car holding a rifle. He looked around for the assailant, confused.

The blue Zamyad pickup then exploded.

That was the only part of the operation that didn’t go as planned. The explosion was intended to rip the robot to shreds so the Iranians couldn’t piece together what had happened. Instead, most of the equipment was hurled into the air and then fell to the ground, damaged beyond repair but largely intact.

All in all, the entire operation took less than a minute. Fifteen bullets were fired and Mr. Fakhrizadeh was no more.

An Intelligence Failure

On October 7, Hamas operatives succeeded in evading all of Israel’s security measures and carried out the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

How did one of the world’s best intelligence agencies allow this to happen?

In the aftermath of the tragedy, shocked Israeli officials admitted they had no idea how the attack had gone undetected. But it was later discovered that the attack hadn’t gone undetected.

It had been ignored.

All the warning signs were there. Over a year before the attack, Israel had obtained Hamas’s battle plans, a 40-page document code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined in chilling detail the devastating invasion Hamas were planning: a barrage of rockets, drones to disable security systems, and gunmen infiltrating Israel via paragliders, motorcycles, and on foot. The plan included sensitive details about Israeli military positions and communications, raising questions about potential leaks within Israel’s security apparatus.

But the document was dismissed.

It was too ambitious for Hamas to carry out, Israeli officials said. After all, this was Gaza. Operatives were scattered, underfunded, and could never execute such a large-scale operation.

Underpinning the dismissal of the Hamas plans was a misapprehension about Hamas leaders’ motives. Israeli intelligence believed that while individual suicide bombers might be happy to lay down their lives, terrorist leaders would always stop short of bringing outright destruction on themselves. In 2018, Yahya Sinwar gave an interview to Yediot Ahronoth, in which he stated, “I don’t want any more wars… my first commitment is to act in the interest of my people.”

This belief, that Hamas was focused on negotiations and economic gains, such as permits for Palestinians to work in Israel, proved disastrously wrong.

Israel’s Ongoing Offensive

“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu stated in recent a televised address to the Iranian people. “There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country.”

For decades, Israel has been inserting Mossad agents into Iran, Lebanon, and other regions. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently revealed in a TV interview that an official tasked with countering Israeli operations had actually been a Mossad agent.

Efforts to infiltrate Hezbollah date back to 2006, following Israel’s inability to decisively defeat the group during a 34-day conflict. In the years since, Unit 8200, the IDF’s signature intelligence unit, developed sophisticated cyber tools to intercept Hezbollah communications. Israel also introduced new systems to ensure that vital intelligence quickly reached its military forces. Surveillance efforts intensified, with drones and advanced satellites continually monitoring Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

In 2008, the Mossad and CIA collaborated to assassinate top Hezbollah operative Imad Mugniyah in Syria. And in 2020, Israeli intelligence tracked Iranian General Qassem Soleimani’s movements as he traveled to Beirut. Though Israel refrained from targeting Soleimani at the time to avoid war, the intelligence was passed to the US, which used it to eliminate Soleimani in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport.

The exploding pagers is another example of the Mossad’s capabilities. Though Israel didn’t confirm responsibility for the explosions, the consensus was clear: Only the Mossad could have carried out such an audacious plan.

Where War Meets Law

Israel’s practice of targeted killings is controversial. The international community had always condemned them as illegal, though things changed after 9/11. “In one swoop, the complaints against us ceased,” said Israel’s head of National Security.

In some instances, soldiers refused to carry out orders they believed were illegal, willing to face consequences rather than cross a line. One example of that was the effort to kill Yasser Arafat in 1982. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon proposed a drastic plan: shoot down the civilian airline Arafat was flying in and let it vanish into the sea.

Israeli jets were placed on high alert, ready to strike at any moment. For nine weeks, from late 1982 to early 1983, these planes were scrambled at least five times to intercept airplanes believed to be carrying Arafat, only to be called back because key figures in the Israeli Air Force resisted this plan. Brigadier General David Gilboa was one of them. He warned that downing a civilian airliner could bring international outrage.

“It could ruin the state,” he argued.

Air force commanders like Zvi Sella refused to obey these orders. “We simply made it impossible,” Sella said.

In one instance, when jets were closing in on a plane, Chief of Staff Raful Eitan demanded to know if Arafat was on board. Gilboa, his heart racing, responded, “My gut feeling is that he isn’t.” Eitan called off the strike. On other occasions, commanders deliberately sabotaged communication, misled their superiors, or stalled long enough to let the planes escape.

In December 2000, IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz summoned Major General Menachem Finkelstein, chief of the Military Advocate Generals Corps, to his office. “Is it permitted for Israel to openly kill specific individuals who are involved in terrorism? Is it legal or illegal?” he asked him.

It was a question no one else had dared to ask. Since the founding of the State of Israel, extra-judicial killings had taken place in a shadowy realm, one adjacent to, yet separate from, the country’s democratic institutions.

But they were an essential part of Israel’s security.

Finkelstein didn’t know what to answer. It was a complex matter, he told the chief of staff.

“Inter arma enim silent leges,” he said, quoting Roman philosopher Cicero. In times of war, the law falls silent.

Finkelstein assembled a team of young IDF lawyers to tackle the question of legality. After weeks of deliberation, a top-secret legal opinion was submitted to the prime minister on January 18, 2001. Titled “Striking at Persons Involved Directly in Attacks against Israelis,” the report concluded that such killings were permissible as acts of self-defense. The team even cited a Talmudic maxim to justify their conclusion: “He who comes to kill you, rise up early and kill him first.” (Sanhedrin 72a)

When Finkelstein handed over the document, his hands were trembling. A deeply religious man, he understood the profound responsibility that came with his decision. “It was clear that this wasn’t a theoretical matter,” he later reflected. “They were going to make use of it.”

The opinion was quickly embraced by the military leadership. For them, it was more than just a legal argument — it was the stamp of approval they had been waiting for. The complex moral and legal questions surrounding Israel’s targeted killing policy had been addressed, and for the officers in the field, their actions were now officially legitimate.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)