Assassination Israel’s longstanding policy: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Navid Nasr, a radio host and political commentator in Zagreb, to discuss the assassination of Samir Qantar, a top member of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah, by Israeli airstrikes.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why do you think that Israel assassinated Mr. Qantar at this time and in this way?   

Nasr: Why in this way? I can't answer why they assassinated him at this time. Well, according to Israeli media and I have just been reading Jerusalem Post just a few minutes before I got on air with you, their reasoning is that he was in Syria working for Iran, trying to create logistics for the possibility of cross-border attacks into Israel. Whether that's true or not, we have no way of no way, but that at least is the justification, the explanation that they are putting out there. By the way, they have not, as of yet, at least so far as I know, officially claimed responsibility [for the raid]. The group [that] said Israel did it is the National Defense Forces (NDF) in Syria. Actually, I don't even think Syrian state media itself has acknowledged it, but it is quietly known and NDF has no reason to lie and Israel is playing it really quiet so far by not claiming responsibility for this.  

Press TV: You know it is not the first that we have seen this type of assassinations by Israel whether they have claimed direct responsibility or not, but we see no so-called international response. Not only did they kill this Hezbollah commander, but they also killed at least ten other people who were in the apartment building and we see this time and time and time again from Israel, from the United States and nothing is talked about these other people besides the Hezbollah commander. I want to look at it beyond that; I want to look at the innocent lives, that of course we are not saying that he was guilty of anything but from their perspective, innocent people who happened to be in the building that they can just killed them at will and nothing is said about it. Your take sir.

Nasr: Well, I mean if we look at it from that perspective as you alluded to here, it  doesn't really matter what Samir Qantar’s political affiliations were and are or, you know, what group he was or was not a part of because this kind of assassination is a long-standing policy of both the Israeli (...) regime and the US government. With the US government we have seen it in Yemen, in Afghanistan and with the Israeli (...) regime we have seen it time and time again in the West Bank and Gaza where supposedly Hamas commanders hiding out in some apartment building and there will be a missile that will take out the whole complex for the sake of getting to this one guy. If it was unusual, if it hadn't already happened countless times before, we could say something but it is norm now for this kind of assassination to happen, for bystanders to be killed as well and for no one to issue any apology about it or say that they won't go about things this way again. You know it will be almost disingenuous anyway to issue an apology. I mean this was a goal; they wanted to eliminate him [and] they did. Any kind of sorry we want about it this way doesn't matter. I mean, you know, what matters is it happened that shouldn't have happened. It probably happened, well I'm not going to speculate but you know, for as much as we don't like it; Israeli intelligence has presence in most neighboring countries, in most countries in the region. It's a reason why we see for example targeted assassinations of Iranian scientists, things like that, on the streets of Iran.

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