Explaining Israel's Misuse of Strategic Assassinations

This study explains Israel's insufficiently discriminate use of strategic assassinations during the last two decades. It shows that the tool's misuse considerably diminished its overall contribution to Israel's national security. It identifies five dimensions of systematic misuse: timing, political views of the targets, organizational affiliation, domestic political consequences for the adversary, and the visibility of Israel's responsibility. It finds three clusters of causes for these patterns of misuse: a flawed decision-making culture, the prevalence of false causal stories, and the pernicious effect of norms. This study could not find evidence for a direct link between domestic political pressures to any systematic pattern of misuse.