QUESTION: What are the implications of the U.S. government's missile strike [on al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen] yesterday? . . . I'm sure many Israelis are wondering what the difference is between this and a targeted killing. And me, too. . . .

STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN RICHARD BOUCHER: Our policy on targeted killings in the Israeli-Palestinian context has not changed. . . .

QUESTION: What, so you have one rule for one conflict and another rule? . . .

BOUCHER: I think we all understand the situation with regard to Israeli-Palestinian issues and the prospects of peace and the prospects of negotiation and the prospects of the need to create an atmosphere for progress. A lot of different things come into play there.

--State Department briefing, November 5

TRULY, WHATEVER Richard Boucher is paid, it's not enough. His ability to advocate a nonsensical State Department line, with a straight face, time and again, is a credit to the diplomatic profession. Ever since the start of the Al Aksa Intifada in 2000, he has repeatedly condemned Israel's practice of killing terrorists and instead called for negotiations to settle the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. A typical comment came on March 8, 2002: "We've made clear that actions like targeted killings need to be halted now and always urged them to follow a path where security can be achieved for both sides through their cooperation."

A very laudable sentiment, except it raises some obvious questions: How is Israel supposed to defend itself if it can't kill the people who are killing its citizens? And how would the United States react if it faced a terrorist threat of similar magnitude?

The answer to the latter question came last week when a Predator drone over Yemen used a Hellfire missile to incinerate a car carrying Qaed Salim Senyan al-Harthi and five other suspected al Qaeda members. Unlike previous attacks in Afghanistan, this one occurred far from a conventional battlefield. But nobody at the State Department suggested that it disrupted the "prospects of peace" with al Qaeda, or that it impaired America's ability to "create an atmosphere for progress" in dealing with these murderous thugs. The only official to voice such sentiments was, no surprise, the foreign minister of Sweden, who condemned the CIA strike as "a summary execution that violates human rights." "Even terrorists," Anna Lindh explained, unctuously, "must be treated according to international law."

The risible Swedish response was almost universally ignored, as it should have been. Everyone--at least everyone outside Western Europe--understands that America is locked in a battle to the death with al Qaeda. The opportunity to arrest terrorists does not always exist; sometimes they must simply be eliminated. That does not make such strikes "assassinations" or "murders" any more than the killing of enemy soldiers would be. In fact there is no difference between the two situations; America is at war right now. Since international law permits the killing of enemy combatants, the United States was acting lawfully when it blasted al-Harthi and company.

So, too, Israel is in the right when it targets terrorists. Between the beginning of the Al Aksa Intifada on September 30, 2000, and September 1, 2002, more than 415 Israeli civilians were murdered and more than 2,000 maimed or injured (figures that don't include soldiers killed, many while engaged in peaceful pursuits). Israel's total population is only 6 million (a symbolic figure, that). If a similar proportion of America's population had been killed, we would have lost more than 19,000 people--the equivalent of six September 11's.

Apologists for Palestinian terror argue that suicide bombings targeting bus stops and cafés are justified because the Palestinians have no alternative means to achieve their political goals. This specious rationale--which ignores Israel's willingness, at Camp David in 2000, to grant practically all of the Palestinians' territorial demands--was exploded in an important report issued last week by Human Rights Watch, hardly a bastion of Israeli apologists.