OPINION: Were Dee killers executed rather than being brought to justice in court of law?

There may be more important issues over which to lose sleep but the reported killing by Israeli special forces of two Palestinians “suspected” of murdering Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina, and the killing of a “third senior operative who aided the two terrorists,” raises quite serious questions about the state of due process in latter day Israel.

The Israeli intelligence agencies enjoy a deservedly high reputation for the quality of the information they gather. It may therefore be safe to assume that the relevant officials possessed reliable evidence that the targeted men, although only described as suspects, were probably responsible for the murders.

In any event, we can be sure the authorities had ample suspicion, if not proof of their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

However, it may not be quite so safe to assume that the circumstances in which the special forces unit went into action warranted killing the suspected perpetrators on the spot.

If they were dispatched by shooting, was this because they posed an immediate threat of armed resistance to lawful capture at gunpoint?

For example, after the Israelis had gained sudden entry to the suspects’ lair, were the wanted men shot because they ignored calls to “drop your weapons” and instead raised their guns to fire at their would-be captors?

The Israelis would surely have been equipped with body worn cameras to confirm such a claim.

On the other hand, did the unit commander consider that it was too dangerous to enter the hideout by stealth and that they had little choice but to burst in with scatter guns blazing? Or was it otherwise decided to take no chances and instead lob in grenades or resort to drone-launched smart ordnance?

Was it perhaps feared that there was insufficient admissible evidence to warrant putting the suspects on trial or that a courtroom would risk providing a platform for prolonged stirring rhetoric?

To clarify the circumstances, including the releasing of video footage into the public domain, would hardly involve disclosing details of methodology so secret that it might jeopardise the security of future operations.

But even if video were regarded as too sensitive for release, at least a general description of the circumstances – coupled with assurances that corroborative video existed – might well allay anxieties that the suspects were purposively executed rather than being brought to task in a court of law.

Was it perhaps feared that there was insufficient admissible evidence to warrant putting the suspects on trial or that a courtroom would risk providing a platform for prolonged stirring rhetoric?

Rather unfortunately, those anxieties were unlikely to be dispelled by the triumphalist language used by Benjamin Netanyahu when he repeatedly spoke of the fact that “we settled accounts” with the Dee murderers.

The phrase is not necessarily indicative of summary justice, although it certainly smacks of taking a draconian shortcut.

But if the prime minister was sanctioning extra-judicial vengeance this would hardly be out of kilter with his administration’s vexatious plan to stem judicial intervention in government policy.