A person looking at the destruction in the place where Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in Choueifat, southeast of Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: AP.
US President Joe Biden issued a statement praising Israel for the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, calling it “a measure of justice” for the victims of Hezbollah’s actions, including Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians. The assassination, carried out by Israeli airstrikes, has killed dozens of civilians in addition to Nasrallah and threatens a full-scale regional war.
The US statement has sparked sharp criticism by legal experts who argue that the endorsement of extrajudicial killings undermines international law. Legal scholars and human rights advocates have expressed concern over Biden’s framing of the operation, calling it a dangerous precedent that disregards the rule of law.
Ramy Abdu, Chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, was among those who condemned Biden’s response, emphasizing that true justice cannot be achieved through extrajudicial killings. “The accepted method of achieving justice is not through assassinations but through international courts and legal mechanisms,” Abdu stated. He argued that by endorsing such killings, the US government is normalizing actions that violate international human rights norms. “This is America’s concept of justice—extrajudicial killings without accountability,” Abdu added.
Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and Associate Professor at Rutgers University, strongly criticized the White House’s response, arguing that it reflects a broader trend in US policy to reshape the laws of war in the context of the so called war on terror. “The statement from the White House exemplifies how, over two decades, the US has worked to alter the laws of war, applying them differently to Western powers while treating the Global South as exceptions,” Erakat said.
She further explained that framing Nasrallah’s assassination as “a measure of justice” dehumanizes Lebanese civilians and undermines Lebanon’s sovereignty. Erakat stressed that such language erases the distinction between military targets and civilians, effectively justifying the destruction of civilian infrastructure under the guise of self-defense. “If this happened in Tel Aviv, the international community would call it ‘barbaric’ and ‘reckless,’ but when it happens in Lebanon, it is celebrated as justice,” she noted.
Erakat also connected Biden’s statement to a long history of US practices that bypass international legal norms. She argued that the US has expanded the concept of self-defense to include preventive, rather than merely preemptive, strikes. “This has led to a global pattern of extrajudicial assassinations, drone strikes, and covert operations in countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, often without any legal oversight,” she said.
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The professor also highlighted how the US has used its global “war on terror” to justify actions like torture, indefinite detention, and the invasion of sovereign countries without United Nations Security Council authorization. “Yet, the US continues to claim the moral high ground, dictating what is and isn’t terrorism, while endorsing acts that violate international law,” she concluded.
Israel had dropped approximately 85 bunker-buster bombs on an entire block, each containing one ton of explosives, as part of the mission to eliminate Nasrallah. Four buildings were entirely leveled, murdering everyone inside including civilians.
