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Assassinations have never been a mainstay of warfare. The 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not orchestrated by any European power, and the aftermath led to the outbreak of WWI. In WWII for example assassinations were not a method of warfare except by Partisans in only a few notable cases, and today we refer to Partisan warfare as 'terrorism'.
During the Cold War the attempted assassinations of Castro and other foreign leaders was a huge scandal when it was made public and Ford, Carter, and Reagan all issued Executive Orders prohibiting assassinations by any agent of the US government. The KGB engaged in some assassinations of dissidents, but the huge reliance on assassination for waging warfare by Israel and Mossad is unique to Israel and not precedented in the history of warfare. They heavily rely on assassinations to wage war and manipulate political proceedings and negotiations, probably more than any other country in history combined.
I don't want to be class reductivist. But no shit it's not a mainstay of warfare - because the methods and norms of warfare are set by the ruling elites and they obviously don't want to be in the firing line of reciprocal action. Do you think the 50,000 American guys that died in Vietnam would have preferred a series of assassination attempts on leadership or key figures to stem the spread of communism, even if it meant that Kissinger or William Rogers might have their cars blown up (I have no evidence or intuition that this would me more effective, nor do I intend to defend that position), or would the ungentlemanly breaking of norms upset them too much?
I think this is a bit orthogonal to the topic, though. "Decapitating enemy leadership" has arguably always been a "legitimate" (insofar as such things can be "legitimate" when you go down to the level of primitive, tribal tit-for-tat) strategy in warfare. The rebel army seeks to overthrow the Emperor, killing him if necessary; the Emperor is in his right to demand the rebel leader's head on a pike; rival kingdoms are perfectly fine with the enemy bloodline being extirpated, and so on. Consider the Ferguson, the 18-Century rifle that could have been used to assassinate George Washington.
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This is an unfortunate example to have chosen. I just finished reading The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark, who goes to great lengths to show the involvement official and semi-official Serbia in the assassination plot.
In particular, Dragutin Dimitrijević (a.k.a. "Apis") was both chief of Serbian military intelligence and a leading member of the Black Hand. According to Clark, he was "the principle architect behind the plot". Serbian officer Major Vojislav Tankosić also played a key role training and arming the Princip and co.
The relationship of the Black Hand and other Serbian irredentist groups to "official" Serbia was also complicated. Lots of members of the Serbian officer corps and intelligence service were more or less openly members, and the groups existed with the tacit approval and often support of the government and its institutions. Indeed, much of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia concerns demands that "official" Serbia divorce itself from these groups and networks.
Clark also alleges that Prime Minister Nikola Pašić was forewarned of the plot and even tried to send a clumsy warning to the Austrians.
Seems like pretty thin evidence, "two degrees of separation" notwithstanding. What it does prove is how the practice itself is a sort of Pandora's Box. Everybody was scandalized by the assassination, no European power took credit for it. It led to a massively destructive war.
So now that Israel has embraced and normalized the practice as S.O.P in engaging in warfare, what are we to make of it? It's dangerous at best. They know they could start a regional war by conducting assassinations in Tehran. That's the point. They want a regional war so they can drag America to their defense.
The 1914 plot is a very good example for how and why the practice has not been used in warfare in the past. Imagine if the US engages in a Proxy war with China, and China starts assassinating US politicians or sending mailbombs to civilian factory workers. All hell would break lose.
In my view, the case as made in the book is pretty strong that official Serbia bears significant responsibility for the assassination. Clark spends about the first third of the book tracing the history of Serbian irredentism, the relationships between terrorist irredentist groups, and the Serbian officer corps and the civilian politicians. These guys were trying to maintain secrecy and plausible deniability, so by its very nature the case relies on some circumstantial evidence. That said, I wouldn't describe the evidence as "thin" - I found myself pretty well convinced.
If you haven't read it, I expect you'd enjoy Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. Isreal's targeted assassination programmes have been extensive ever since they began hunting Nazis post-WW2 - the author credits them with "at least" 2,700 since then, which is to say this isn't something the've embraced and normalised recently.
Clearly, whatever our assessment is, at least some important decision makers within the Israeli state think it's an effective means of achieving their goals - and have done for a while for now.
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List of American assassinations
List of Russian assassinations
Looking at the list of American assassinations is jarring in that they are entirely after September 11th, in the context of the Middle East conflict and America's alliance with Israel. Israel's tradition of using assassination for political purposes and warfare goes back decades before. Certainly the evidence you've posted bolsters the case that these types of assassinations are brand new in the history of warfare and were introduced and normalized by Israel's methods in Palestine.
Russia is more comparable example. But take those two lists, the American and Russian, and compare that to the list of Israeli assassinations.
These lists would indeed suggest that Israel's reliance on assassinations in engaging in warfare is not precedented in world history.
Items 2 and 4 in the US list encompasses thousands of individuals. Vietnam alone includes more individual assassinations than the entire rest of the list. The US has assassinated so many people, you can't even get an accurate number or a list of names. That the Israeli list is so exhaustive is evidence against your claim.
Honestly, just the word "assassination" with its history is evidence against your claim.
The Phoenix Program was a counter-insurgency program, not created as an assassination program. Nobody considers all the Hamas killed in Gaza in 9 months to have been "assassinated." The assassinations mentioned in that Wikipedia article include things like car-bombing political figures and civilians, or sniping somebody in the back while they are in their garden.
i.e. from a Veteran of the program:
Even so, especially because much of the violence fell under the gray area of "assassination", the program was denounced and disbanded.
This stands in sharp contrast to the long history of assassinations in Israel where it's a matter of official policy and a longstanding pattern of behavior.
Ah, quibbling over definitions is always a fun time.
I contend that CIA-led ops going to a person's home in their village and killing them there, many times a civilian "infrastructure" and not even a soldier, is a central example of "assassination". This is without going into the kidnapping and torture even. In a few short years the US managed to do just that enough times that it will take Israel centuries to catch up, which means that whatever Israel does is hardly "unique".
On the other hand, if that doesn't count as "assassination" and neither does counter-insurgency or targeted killings, then what are you left with from the Israeli list? All the PLO members are just combatants hiding in other countries, everyone killed in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Judea and Samaria count as either counter-insurgency, seek and destroy or out-right combat - which is most of that list by the way - and now you're left with... what? a few tens of people at best? I'll raise you all the CIA attempts at Castro & other actual world leaders and call it even?
Now compare that to the Russian list, and I'd say "unique" goes right out the window.
Russia and the US are just easy modern-day examples, though. The most obvious refutation, as I hinted at earlier, are the original Assassins with hundreds of central-example stab-in-the-back killings of political leaders under their belts. I'm sure they would've done more if they had predator drones.
No, this is you quibbling over definitions in order to deny the obvious fact that assassinations have always been an operating tactic of the Zionist movement, and that the degree to which they have engaged in it is not precedented in world history and especially European history. Because your denial is so weak, you appeal to a single CIA operation which was mostly executed by the South Vietnamese themselves; an operation that became denounced and disbanded precisely because it evoked negative sentiment around the practice of assassination even though the operation was not created with that objective.
You are just playing dumb. You don't understand the difference between a firefight among insurgents and an occupying force, and car-bombing a Palestinian political writer? Or sending a mail-bomb to factory workers?
The definition of assassination makes clear the difference, you are just trying to fudge the definition to pretend that Israel's conduct in this realm is normal when it is absolutely not.
It's telling that the global hegemon, America, has engaged in a substantial amount of warfare in its history. And among all that, all you can do is point to this Vietnam Operation which actually proves the distaste European society has historically had towards the practice in order to justify the long-standing systematic policy of assassination embraced by the Zionist movement.
No, that one single example is so strong that it is simply sufficient, all on its own, to refute your claim. Nothing else is needed, despite your denials. If you feel otherwise, we can go into all the other CIA assassinations - both failed and successful - and tally those up. Castro alone is like 8 times.
As I said, simply count how many instances in the list are the former and how many are the latter. I’ll grant you a few tens of the latter. Most of that list, and especially from 2000 onwards, is basically just some militant getting airstriked.
How is it a strong example when:
The long history of the Zionist movement engaging in assassinations with car bombs, mail bombs, terrorist tactics as a matter of official policy for many decades absolutely stands out among European military history. It is not normal, or at least it was not until now.
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Trump assassinated a more senior Iranian figure than any that Mossad has targeted. The FSB regularly uses assassinations. I hardly think it’s unique.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance
You just linked to a battle, at a military installation on a battlefield. The Czech partisan assassination of Reinhard Heydrich on the streets of Prague is more similar to the type of assassinations we are talking about here, the ones that have been made ubiquitous and normalized by Zionist operation in Palestine.
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