This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
With the killings of two terror chiefs in the capital cities of two enemy nations in the past few hours, the existential war that began for Israel with Hamas’s invasion and slaughter on October 7 has now entered uncharted territory.
The elimination of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military official, in a strike in Beirut confirmed by Israel, demonstrated Israel’s remarkable intelligence capabilities and its capacity to carry out a precision strike even on a target who would have known that he was in Israel’s sights. And it constituted at least a symbolic response to the horrific Hezbollah missile attack that killed 12 children in an Israeli Druze village three days earlier.
It was by no means unprecedented, however. The IAF killed Hamas military chief Saleh al-Arouri in a similarly precise strike in Beirut seven months ago, and, going back 22 years, killed the then-Hezbollah leader Abbas Mousawi in a strike on his convoy in southern Lebanon. READ MORE
