On targeted killings – Yossi Melman in Haaretz:

‘Even though in Israel they are using the word "assassination," what happened on Saturday in Khan Yunis – assuming that Mohammed Deif was indeed killed – was not an assassination but an aerial attack. Its message was that the end justifies the means even if the means cause death and injury to scores, even hundreds of people. In doing so, Israel has traveled a long road since the terms "assassination" and "targeted killing" entered our vocabulary.
The first targeted killing occurred in 1956 when operatives of Military Intelligence's 504th unit sent a booby-trapped Quran to Col. Mustafa Hafez, an Egyptian officer in Gaza, who was responsible for dispatching gangs of terrorists (fedayeen) into Israel. Since then, the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet and Mossad have, with the approval of Israel's political leaders, employed the tactic. It has been used against terrorists, at times against German scientists, Nazi war criminals and, according to foreign media reports, against a Canadian weapons engineer and, over the past two decades, against Iranian nuclear scientists.’

(…)

‘Since the start of the Gaza war, Israel has loosened the reins. What started with targeted killings evolved into non-targeted killingsand is now developing into a policy of tolerating the deaths of innocents, including children and women, in order to eliminate a terrorist.
Under the circumstances, indignation and a desire for revenge is inevitable, but it is also connected with developments in Israeli society. Society is becoming more and more violent, not only towards the Palestinians in the West Bank, but also against large sections of the Israeli public. This is reflected in how ordinary people conduct themselves in their daily lives and in the hate speech on social networks.’

(…)

‘Today, the IDF's operations in Lebanon and Gaza seem to show that the assassinations themselves have become an end in themselves. The politicians, most of the defense establishment, the IDF, the media and much of the public laud them. They hold that targeted killings will solve Israel's war problems.
However, assassinations, certainly when they are employed so frequently, serve no political purpose – they are of no use and in the long run even increase violence and acts of terrorism. People deceive themselves when they place hope in such tactics.’

(…)

‘The Gaza war proves that Israel has become indifferent to human life. Also for the lives of its own citizens, including the hostages.’

Read the article here.

The targeted killings are at best a clumsy attempt at revenge, meant to satisfy the own population. Most probably they are the result of the lack of a real strategy.

The indifference to human life in Israeli society is not unique, many societies share the same indifference. American society is not better off, but the circumstances make the indifference in Israeli society existential.

The idea that Zionism would produce a (Jewish) state that would be a light among the nations has disappeared. What’s left is what Leonard Cohen sang already many years ago: ‘You want it darker. We kill the flame.’

The question remains how you can ask your people to sacrifice their sons and daughters for a society that has not much more to offer than indifference and the vague sensation that the other is not you. Or maybe the other is you.