Two democracies separated by geography, religion, and colonial history arrived at the same conclusion independently: that terrorists sheltered on foreign soil can be killed there, that the killing can be denied or semi-acknowledged depending on domestic political needs, and that the strategic benefits of eliminating enemy combatants outweigh the diplomatic and legal risks. Israel reached this conclusion after the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972, when Golda Meir authorized Operation Wrath of God to hunt Black September operatives across Europe. India reached the same conclusion decades later, after the Pahalgam massacre and the long chain of provocations stretching back to the IC-814 hijacking of 1999. Both programs target specific individuals. Both use deniable methods. Both operate on foreign soil. Yet the two doctrines diverge in ways that illuminate not just how democracies fight terrorism, but how they account for that fighting to their own citizens.

The analytical question is precise: across which dimensions do India’s shadow war and Israel’s targeted killing program converge, across which do they diverge, and what does each point of convergence or divergence reveal about the relationship between democracy, secrecy, and state violence? This is not a question that opinion columns have answered systematically. Brief comparisons exist, usually noting the obvious parallel (both countries kill terrorists abroad) before moving to commentary. No existing analysis compares the two programs across multiple structured dimensions using specific operational evidence. That is what this article provides: an eight-dimension comparative framework covering target-selection criteria, operational methods, attribution policy, domestic legal architecture, international legal justification, media relationships, diplomatic consequence management, and strategic effectiveness. Each dimension holds both programs in the same analytical frame simultaneously, because a comparison that profiles one program and then the other with a bridging paragraph is not a comparison at all.

The comparison matters beyond academic interest because India’s program is at an inflection point. The diplomatic fallout from the Canadian and American revelations has forced a reckoning that India’s leadership has not yet fully engaged: can total deniability survive as a long-term strategy when credible evidence accumulates from allied governments, federal courts, and investigative journalists? The acceleration of international scrutiny, combined with the growing body of circumstantial and direct evidence, has compressed the timeline within which India must decide whether to evolve its institutional posture or double down on denial. Israel faced a similar inflection point in the 1970s, when the Lillehammer disaster exposed the limits of its own denial posture, and its subsequent institutional evolution toward managed transparency offers lessons that India’s security planners would benefit from studying. The comparison is not merely descriptive; it is prescriptive, because every dimension of divergence between the two programs represents a choice that Indian policymakers could reconsider if the strategic calculus changes.

The thesis this comparison supports is direct: India’s shadow war borrows Israel’s operational logic without adopting its transparency mechanisms. Mossad’s program operates within a framework of semi-official acknowledgment, domestic legal debate, judicial review, and historical documentation by Israeli journalists. India’s campaign operates in total deniability, with the Ministry of External Affairs dismissing every allegation as “false and malicious propaganda,” no domestic legal framework authorizing or constraining the operations, and no Indian journalist granted access to the program’s institutional architecture. The Indian model is Mossad minus accountability. Whether that subtraction makes India’s approach more effective or more dangerous is the central disagreement this article adjudicates.

The Two Programs

Mossad’s targeted killing program spans more than five decades. Its origins lie in the aftermath of the September 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, when eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by the Palestinian group Black September. Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized a covert campaign to hunt and kill those responsible, creating a precedent that no subsequent Israeli government has reversed. The campaign evolved through distinct eras: the post-Munich European operations of the 1970s, the Beirut-focused campaigns of the 1980s, the shift toward Hamas and Hezbollah leadership targeting in the 1990s and 2000s, and the campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists in the 2010s and 2020s. Across these eras, the methods changed (from pistol shootings in European apartments to car bombs in Beirut to remotely triggered explosions in Tehran), but the doctrinal foundation remained constant: Israel reserves the right to kill individuals who threaten its security, wherever they are, and will develop the intelligence and operational capability to do so. Ronen Bergman documented this doctrine comprehensively in his landmark work, which established that Israel has killed more people through targeted operations than any other Western democracy, with estimates exceeding 2,700 over the program’s full history. The complete history of Mossad’s program reveals an institution that has refined targeted killing into a permanent instrument of statecraft.

India’s shadow war is younger and narrower. The campaign, as documented by open-source reporting from Pakistani police records, international media investigations, and Indian defense analysts, involves the systematic elimination of India’s most-wanted terrorists on Pakistani soil using motorcycle-borne gunmen. The decoded pattern is consistent: two riders on a motorcycle approach the target at a predictable location (frequently a mosque during prayer time, a shop, or during a routine walk), fire at close range, and escape through congested urban traffic. The targets are specific: Lashkar-e-Taiba commanders involved in attacks on Indian soil, Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives connected to the Kashmir insurgency, Hizbul Mujahideen leaders who directed violence against Indian security forces, and Khalistani separatists who threatened Indian territorial integrity from foreign bases. Pakistan’s own police reports consistently describe the killers as “unknown gunmen,” and no entity has claimed responsibility for any operation. The Indian government denies all involvement, with the MEA characterizing allegations as fabrications designed to deflect from Pakistan’s own sponsorship of terrorism. Yet the target selection, the operational consistency, and the alignment between India’s most-wanted lists and the casualty roster point toward a coordinated campaign guided by India’s evolving covert operations doctrine.

The two programs share a foundational premise: that sovereignty does not shield those who use foreign territory as a base from which to attack. The premise is not novel; it has been articulated by multiple states across multiple conflicts, from the US pursuit of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to Turkey’s operations against the PKK in northern Iraq. What distinguishes the India-Israel comparison from other state practices is that both countries are democracies with independent judiciaries, vibrant civil societies, and constitutional protections for individual rights, yet they have arrived at dramatically different institutional architectures for governing the same type of activity. But they differ in nearly every operational and institutional dimension beyond that shared premise. The comparison reveals not just two methods of counter-terrorism but two philosophies of democratic accountability under conditions of existential threat.

Dimension One: Target-Selection Criteria

Israel’s target-selection process, as reconstructed from declassified accounts, journalistic investigations, and court proceedings, operates through institutional channels that include intelligence assessment, legal review, and political authorization. The Israeli Supreme Court’s landmark 2006 ruling on targeted killings established that each operation must satisfy three conditions: the target must be directly participating in hostilities, arrest must be infeasible, and the expected civilian harm must be proportionate to the military advantage gained. Mossad and Shin Bet maintain classified target lists, but the existence of a legal framework means that the selection process, however secretive, occurs within boundaries that the judiciary has defined. Former Mossad directors have described the internal debate process in published memoirs: intelligence analysts present the case for a target’s operational significance, legal advisors assess the operation’s compliance with the Court’s framework, and the political echelon (typically the Prime Minister and a small security cabinet) authorizes the action. The process is not transparent in real time, but it is reviewable after the fact, and it has been reviewed, both by the Supreme Court and by the Israeli media.

India’s target-selection process is entirely opaque. No Indian court has ruled on the legality of targeted killings abroad. No Indian legal framework defines who may be targeted, under what conditions, or through what authorization chain. The absence of legal architecture does not mean the absence of selection criteria; it means the criteria, whatever they are, exist only within the intelligence bureaucracy and are subject to no external check. What can be inferred from the pattern of eliminations is that the targets share common characteristics: they appear on India’s most-wanted lists (the NIA’s published lists of designated terrorists), they are associated with organizations proscribed under Indian law (LeT, JeM, Hizbul Mujahideen), and they have credible operational histories linking them to attacks on Indian soil or against Indian security forces. The selectivity of the targeting, the fact that the victims are consistently senior operatives rather than random individuals, argues against a random or criminal explanation and for a deliberate selection process. But who conducts that process, who authorizes individual operations, and what threshold of evidence is required remain unknown to any institution outside the intelligence services themselves.

The divergence is stark. Israel’s selection process is constrained by judicial precedent, reviewed by legal advisors, authorized by elected officials, and documented in forms that can be examined (however belatedly) by courts and journalists. India’s selection process is unconstrained by any publicly known mechanism, reviewed by no known external body, authorized through channels that the government does not acknowledge exist, and documented nowhere that any civilian institution can access. Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution has argued that the presence or absence of institutional constraints on target selection is the single most important variable in determining whether a targeted killing program enhances or undermines democratic governance. By that measure, Israel’s program operates within democracy’s boundaries, however imperfectly, while India’s program operates outside them entirely.

The target categories themselves reveal further differences in doctrinal scope. Israel’s target lists have evolved across eras: in the 1970s, the targets were specific individuals connected to the Munich massacre; in the 1990s and 2000s, the lists expanded to include the political and military leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah; in the 2010s, they extended to Iranian nuclear scientists whose elimination served Israel’s strategic interests in delaying Iran’s weapons program. The expansion of target categories over five decades illustrates how institutional inertia and strategic evolution combined to broaden the program’s reach. Each expansion was debated within Israel’s security establishment, subjected to legal review (at least after the 2006 ruling), and reflected in shifts in operational planning. India’s target categories, as inferred from the pattern of eliminations, are narrower in one respect and ambiguous in another. The Pakistan-based targets are overwhelmingly individuals connected to anti-India terrorism: LeT commanders, JeM operatives, Hizbul leadership. But the extension of operations to Canada, targeting Khalistani separatists, introduced a target category (diaspora separatists) that is qualitatively different from Pakistan-based terrorists. The Nijjar killing in Surrey, British Columbia, involved a target who, whatever his alleged connections to separatist violence, operated in a democratic country with functioning law enforcement. This expansion suggests that India’s target-selection criteria may be broader, or at least less consistent, than the Pakistan-focused operations alone would indicate.

A further analytical point concerns the intelligence infrastructure required for target selection. Mossad’s targeting capability relies on one of the world’s most sophisticated signals-intelligence and human-intelligence networks, supported by the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 (one of the largest signals-intercept agencies globally), a network of agents in target countries, and cooperation with allied intelligence services. The infrastructure is institutional, funded through official budgets, and accountable (however imperfectly) through the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. India’s targeting infrastructure for the shadow war is less well understood. The identification of targets in Pakistani cities requires either human intelligence sources within Pakistan (agents who can confirm targets’ locations and routines) or signals intelligence capable of monitoring targets’ communications and movements. The former implies a network of assets in one of the most hostile counter-intelligence environments in the world; the latter implies technical capabilities that RAW may have developed with Israeli assistance. Either way, the targeting intelligence represents a significant institutional capability whose existence India denies, creating a paradox where the capability that makes the program possible is itself part of what the government refuses to acknowledge.

The practical consequences of this divergence are significant. When Mossad selects a target that later proves controversial, the targeting decision can be examined. The Lillehammer affair of 1973, where Mossad agents killed Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent Moroccan waiter mistaken for a Black September operative in Norway, produced a diplomatic crisis, criminal prosecutions of the agents involved, and an institutional reckoning within Mossad about intelligence standards for target identification. The accountability mechanism, flawed and delayed as it was, existed. When India’s program produces a targeting error, if it ever has, no mechanism exists for that error to surface, to be examined, or to produce institutional correction. The absence of accountability does not mean the absence of errors. It means the errors remain invisible.

Dimension Two: Operational Methods

Mossad’s operational methods have evolved substantially across five decades. The early post-Munich operations relied on small teams of agents who traveled to European cities, located their targets through surveillance, and killed them using pistols, often in apartments or on quiet streets. The Rome operation of October 1972 involved a shooting outside the target’s apartment. The Paris operation of January 1973 used a similar approach. The Beirut raid of April 1973, by contrast, deployed naval commandos who infiltrated the Lebanese capital and killed three PLO leaders in their homes in a coordinated overnight operation. As the program matured, the methods diversified. Car bombs became a preferred tool in Lebanon during the 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, helicopter-launched missile strikes against Hamas leaders became common in the Palestinian territories. The campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists introduced magnetic bombs attached to cars by motorcycle-borne operatives in Tehran traffic, a method that bears striking resemblance to India’s own motorcycle-based approach. The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020 reportedly used a remote-controlled robotic machine gun, representing the frontier of technological sophistication in targeted killings. This methodological diversity reflects both technological advancement and operational adaptation to different threat environments. Mossad does not have a single method; it has a repertoire that it selects from based on the specific target’s vulnerability profile, the operational environment, and the desired level of attribution.

India’s operational methods, by contrast, display remarkable consistency. The motorcycle assassination pattern is nearly uniform across dozens of reported cases. Two riders approach on a motorcycle. The pillion rider fires at close range, typically with a pistol. The motorcycle disappears into congested traffic. The consistency extends to location selection (mosques, shops, residential streets), timing (prayer time, early morning, evening), and escape methodology (immediate dispersion into urban traffic). This uniformity could indicate either a centralized doctrine that all operational teams follow or an organic convergence on the optimal method for Pakistani urban environments. The modus operandi analysis suggests the former: the consistency extends beyond vehicle choice to approach angles, firing distances, and post-operation behavior, implying training standardization rather than independent adaptation.

The methodological comparison reveals a structural difference in institutional maturity. Mossad has had fifty years to develop a diverse operational toolkit, invest in technological capabilities (from communications intercepts to satellite surveillance to cyber weapons), and train operators across multiple disciplines. RAW’s alleged operational capability, while growing, appears to rely on a single proven method adapted to the specific conditions of Pakistani cities. The motorcycle approach works in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and other Pakistani urban centers because those cities share characteristics, high motorcycle density, congested traffic, limited CCTV coverage, and police forces that struggle with rapid response, that make the method tactically optimal. Whether India’s operational toolkit will diversify as the program matures, as Mossad’s did, or whether the motorcycle method will remain the default as long as Pakistani urban conditions favor it, is an open question.

One striking convergence deserves emphasis: both programs have used motorcycle-borne gunmen. Mossad’s operatives in Tehran attached magnetic bombs to scientists’ cars while riding motorcycles through traffic. India’s alleged operatives in Pakistani cities approach targets on motorcycles and fire directly. The vehicle choice reflects the same tactical calculation in both countries’ operational planning: motorcycles provide approach speed, anonymity, dual-rider capability, and escape routes through traffic that no other vehicle offers. The convergence may not be coincidental. The Mossad-RAW intelligence partnership includes defense cooperation, technology transfer, and training programs that may have facilitated methodological transfer, though the classified nature of intelligence cooperation makes this inference rather than established fact.

Beyond the motorcycle convergence, the two programs differ in their approach to operational scale and tempo. Mossad’s operations have typically been conducted at a low tempo: individual operations planned over months, sometimes years, with extensive surveillance, multiple reconnaissance visits, and carefully constructed cover identities for the operational team. The Fakhrizadeh operation reportedly took over a year to plan. The Rome and Paris operations of 1972-1973 were part of a campaign that stretched across multiple years and involved extensive travel, safe-house establishment, and coordination between multiple teams operating independently across different cities. India’s alleged program, by contrast, operates at a higher tempo, particularly during the 2026 acceleration when the pace of eliminations increased dramatically. The 2026 acceleration saw more than thirty targets eliminated within a single calendar year, a pace that implies either multiple operational teams working simultaneously across Pakistani cities or a surge capability that can be ramped up and down according to political or strategic requirements. The tempo difference suggests different organizational models: Mossad’s model appears to involve specialized teams deployed for specific operations, while India’s may involve locally embedded networks that can be activated repeatedly.

The weapons profiles also differ instructively. Mossad’s arsenal has included suppressed pistols, magnetic car bombs, poisoned chocolate, a modified paraglider-delivered explosive, helicopter-launched Hellfire missiles, and, in the Fakhrizadeh case, reportedly a satellite-linked robotic weapon. The diversity reflects both institutional investment in weapons development and the need to match the weapon to the specific operational environment and desired attribution level. India’s alleged operations almost exclusively involve small arms, typically pistols or revolvers, fired at close range. The consistency of weapon choice reinforces the interpretation that the operations rely on simplicity, reliability, and disposability rather than technological sophistication. A pistol purchased locally in Pakistan, used once, and discarded or abandoned at the scene creates no supply-chain trail back to a state sponsor, unlike a sophisticated explosive device or a technologically advanced weapons system that might carry forensic markers pointing to its manufacturer.

Dimension Three: Attribution Policy

This dimension produces the sharpest divergence between the two programs, and it is arguably the most consequential for democratic governance.

Israel’s attribution policy operates on a spectrum between outright acknowledgment and deliberate ambiguity, but it never reaches total denial. Some operations are semi-officially acknowledged through planted media stories, background briefings to Israeli journalists, or former officials’ published memoirs. Others are maintained in an ambiguous space where the Israeli government neither confirms nor denies involvement while allowing Israeli media to report extensively on the operational details. The Fakhrizadeh assassination of November 2020 illustrates this approach: Israel’s government issued no official statement claiming responsibility, but Israeli media reported the operation’s details within hours, citing intelligence sources, and no Israeli official challenged the reporting. Ronen Bergman’s “Rise and Kill First” documented hundreds of operations, named specific agents and commanders, and was published in Israel without legal obstruction, an act of institutional openness that is unimaginable in India’s context. The Rise and Kill First doctrine itself became part of public discourse in Israel, debated in op-eds, academic conferences, and Knesset discussions. The Israeli model is not full transparency; it is managed disclosure, calibrated to maintain operational security while allowing enough public information to sustain democratic debate about the program’s legitimacy.

India’s attribution policy is total denial, consistently and without exception. The Ministry of External Affairs has characterized every allegation of Indian involvement in targeted killings abroad as “false and malicious propaganda.” When The Guardian published its investigation naming specific operations and Pakistani casualties, India’s official response was categorical rejection. When Pakistan presented dossiers alleging RAW involvement, India dismissed them as fabrications designed to distract from Pakistan’s own sponsorship of terrorism. When Canada alleged Indian involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, the diplomatic crisis that followed produced Indian denials at every level of government. When the US Department of Justice indicted an Indian national in connection with the alleged Pannun assassination plot, India established an inquiry committee but maintained that the allegations did not reflect government policy. The denial is comprehensive, absolute, and permanent. No Indian official, serving or retired, has publicly acknowledged any operation. No Indian journalist has published an account of the program’s institutional architecture. No Indian court has examined any aspect of the campaign.

The consequence of this divergence is not merely rhetorical. Attribution policy determines whether a democratic society can debate the ethics, legality, and effectiveness of its government’s covert actions. Israel’s managed-disclosure model has enabled a sophisticated domestic conversation about targeted killings: the 2006 Supreme Court ruling was possible only because the program’s existence was publicly known, and the Court could examine specific cases and establish principles. India’s total-denial model prevents any equivalent conversation. Indian courts cannot rule on a program that the government says does not exist. Indian journalists cannot investigate an institutional architecture that no source will describe. Indian citizens cannot debate the ethics of a policy that their government refuses to acknowledge pursuing. Avery Plaw, author of “Targeting Terrorists,” has argued that the attribution question is not peripheral to the accountability question; it is the accountability question. A program that is never attributed is a program that can never be held accountable, and a program that can never be held accountable is a program that operates outside democratic control regardless of the democratic character of the state that sponsors it.

The attribution divergence also affects the psychological dimension of the campaigns. Attribution, even partial or ambiguous, serves a deterrence function. When adversaries know that Israel was responsible for a specific killing, the killing communicates capability and resolve: we found you, we reached you, and we will find and reach the next person who threatens us. This deterrence message is a strategic asset that complements the tactical value of each individual elimination. India’s total denial, by contrast, creates a different psychological dynamic. Pakistan’s intelligence services, the targeted organizations, and regional security analysts all attribute the killings to India despite the official denials. But the absence of official attribution means that the deterrence message is transmitted through inference rather than declaration, reducing its clarity and potentially its impact. The deterrence signal is muddied by the denial; targets know they are being hunted, but the hunting state’s refusal to confirm its responsibility introduces ambiguity about the program’s permanence, its scope, and its escalation trajectory. Some analysts argue that this ambiguity is itself a strategic asset, keeping adversaries uncertain about what India will do next. Others argue that clear attribution would produce stronger deterrence by eliminating the psychological comfort that denial provides to the target population.

The historical trajectory of Israel’s attribution policy is instructive. In the immediate aftermath of Munich, Israel maintained near-total denial about Operation Wrath of God. As operations accumulated and journalistic investigations progressed, the denial became progressively less sustainable. By the 1990s, targeted killings of Hamas leaders were semi-officially attributed through background briefings and media reporting. By the 2010s, the Mossad-Iran campaign was conducted in a space of open ambiguity where nobody believed the denials and the denials themselves had become a diplomatic courtesy rather than a genuine claim of non-involvement. The evolution from denial to ambiguity to semi-acknowledgment occurred gradually, driven by the cumulative weight of evidence, journalistic investigation, and the security establishment’s recognition that managed disclosure served institutional interests better than unsustainable denial. India’s program may be at the beginning of a similar trajectory, with the Canadian and American revelations functioning as the equivalent of Israel’s Lillehammer moment: the first major break in the deniability wall that initiates a gradual, irreversible shift toward greater transparency.

Dimension Four: Domestic Legal Framework

Israel’s targeted killing program operates within a domestic legal framework that, while contested and imperfect, exists. The foundation is the Israeli Supreme Court’s December 2006 ruling in the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Government of Israel case. The Court did not prohibit targeted killings. Instead, it established a conditional framework: targeted killings are permissible under international humanitarian law when the target is a civilian directly participating in hostilities, when arrest is not feasible, when the expected collateral damage is proportionate, and when an independent investigation occurs after each operation. The ruling did not create a blanket authorization; it created a conditional one, with each condition theoretically subject to judicial review. Former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak’s opinion established that Israel’s targeted killing program must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with the burden on the state to demonstrate that each operation met the four conditions.

The practical enforcement of this framework is debatable. Critics argue that the “independent investigation after each operation” requirement has been inconsistently applied, that the proportionality assessment is conducted by the same security establishment that plans the operations, and that the judicial review is retrospective rather than preventive. These criticisms have merit. But the framework’s existence, however imperfectly enforced, creates institutional pressure that shapes behavior. Mossad commanders know that their targeting decisions could, at least in theory, be examined by the Supreme Court. The 2006 ruling created legal boundaries that the security establishment must at minimum acknowledge, even if it does not always honor them in practice. The framework also provides legal protection to the operators themselves: agents who conduct authorized operations within the Court’s framework have legal cover that agents conducting unauthorized operations do not. The distinction between authorized and unauthorized action is itself a governance mechanism.

India has no equivalent domestic legal framework for targeted killings abroad. No Indian statute authorizes, regulates, or constrains extraterritorial lethal operations. The Research and Analysis Wing operates under the Cabinet Secretariat, but its mandate, as publicly understood, covers intelligence gathering rather than covert action. No Indian court has examined the legality of targeted killings because no Indian government has acknowledged that such killings occur. The absence of a legal framework is not an oversight; it is a deliberate structural choice. A framework would require acknowledgment, and acknowledgment would require accountability. India’s total-denial posture is logically incompatible with a legal framework because a framework, by definition, acknowledges the existence of the activity it regulates.

The consequence is a democratic paradox. India is the world’s largest democracy, with an independent judiciary, a free press, and constitutional protections for individual rights. Yet its most consequential security program operates entirely outside the structures of democratic governance. The program is not illegal in the sense that a court has ruled against it; it is extra-legal in the sense that no court has been given the opportunity to examine it. George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has argued that India’s no-acknowledgment approach creates what he terms an “accountability vacuum,” a space where consequential state actions occur without any mechanism for democratic oversight, judicial review, or institutional learning from mistakes. The vacuum does not mean that mistakes are not occurring; it means that when they occur, no institution exists to detect, correct, or prevent their recurrence.

The legal vacuum extends beyond the operations themselves to the operators. In Israel, Mossad agents who conduct authorized operations within the Supreme Court’s framework enjoy legal protection under Israeli law. If an agent is captured abroad, the Israeli government can argue that the agent was acting within a legal framework and advocate for their legal defense or diplomatic extraction. In India, operatives conducting alleged shadow war operations have no legal status under Indian law as authorized state actors. If a RAW operative or locally recruited asset is captured in Pakistan (or in Canada, or in the United States), India’s government cannot invoke a legal framework to protect them because no framework exists to invoke. The US indictment of an Indian national in connection with the Pannun plot illustrated this vulnerability: the individual allegedly acted on behalf of Indian intelligence, but India’s denial posture meant that no legal framework existed under which to claim sovereign immunity, assert state-authorized conduct, or provide formal legal defense. The accused individual was left legally exposed because the legal architecture that would have protected them was never constructed.

Israeli legal scholars have identified this asymmetry as one of the strongest arguments for a domestic legal framework: not that the framework constrains operations (though it does), but that it protects the state and its agents when operations are exposed. The Israeli Supreme Court’s ruling did not exist primarily to limit Mossad; it existed to legitimize what Mossad does, creating a zone of legality that the security establishment operates within. India’s refusal to create such a zone means that every operative is legally vulnerable, every operation is potentially criminal under Indian and international law, and the state has no legal defense when operations surface. Avery Plaw has argued that this is not merely an oversight but a structural weakness that will become increasingly costly as international legal scrutiny of targeted killings intensifies through bodies like the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Human Rights Council.

The comparative legal analysis also reveals different trajectories of judicial engagement. Israel’s Supreme Court did not address targeted killings proactively; it was forced to engage by a petition from civil-society organizations. The resulting ruling was the product of a democratic society in which citizens have both the legal standing and the information necessary to challenge government actions before the courts. India’s democratic architecture includes similar civil-society organizations and a similarly independent Supreme Court, but the information necessary to bring a challenge is entirely absent. No Indian civil-society organization can petition the Supreme Court to review the legality of operations that the government denies conducting. The denial functions as a procedural shield against democratic accountability, preventing the very first step (a legal challenge) in a process that might eventually produce the kind of legal framework Israel now operates within.

Dimension Five: International Legal Justification

Both India and Israel face the same tension in international law between the right of self-defense (Article 51 of the UN Charter) and the prohibition on the use of force against other states’ territorial integrity (Article 2(4)). Both resolve this tension pragmatically rather than doctrinally, but they resolve it differently.

Israel has developed explicit legal arguments for its targeted killing program, presented to international bodies, argued before its own courts, and debated in academic forums. The core argument rests on three pillars: first, that Israel faces ongoing armed conflict with non-state actors (Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and previously, Black September and the PLO), making international humanitarian law, rather than peacetime human rights law, the applicable framework; second, that the host states (Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Iran) are either unwilling or unable to neutralize the threat emanating from their territory, triggering Israel’s inherent right of self-defense under Article 51; and third, that targeted killing, when conducted with precision and proportionality, is a less destructive alternative to full-scale military operations, making it the more humanitarian option. These arguments are contested by international law scholars, many of whom argue that the “unwilling or unable” doctrine lacks sufficient state-practice support to constitute customary international law, but they are at least articulated as legal positions that can be debated, challenged, and refined. The global targeted killing legal debate captures these competing arguments comprehensively.

India has articulated no international legal justification for the operations it denies conducting. Since the government’s position is that no operations are occurring, there is no legal defense to offer. The diplomatic posture rests entirely on denial rather than justification. When pressed by international actors (Canada’s government, US federal prosecutors, The Guardian’s investigative team), India has responded with categorical denials, counter-accusations (alleging that Pakistan or its proxies are responsible for the killings), and diplomatic pressure to prevent the allegations from gaining institutional traction. This approach has advantages: it avoids establishing legal precedents that other states might cite, it prevents India from being drawn into international legal forums where the operations would be examined, and it maintains maximum operational flexibility because no legal framework constrains future action. But it also has costs: India cannot invoke self-defense under Article 51 without acknowledging the actions it would be defending, it cannot build international legal support for its counter-terrorism methodology, and it cannot contribute to the development of international norms governing targeted killings in ways that would favor India’s strategic interests.

The comparison reveals a paradox of legal strategy. Israel’s willingness to make legal arguments has subjected its program to greater international scrutiny, more UN resolutions, more ICJ proceedings, and more academic criticism than it would have faced under a pure-denial strategy. But it has also generated a body of legal reasoning that partially legitimizes the practice, created judicial precedents (including the 2006 Supreme Court ruling) that other democracies can reference, and positioned Israel as a participant in, rather than an outlaw from, the international legal conversation about targeted killings. India’s refusal to engage in legal argumentation has shielded it from some forms of international scrutiny but has also left it without legal defenses if the scrutiny intensifies, without precedents that would protect its interests, and without influence over how international norms in this area develop.

The “unwilling or unable” doctrine, which forms one of the pillars of Israel’s legal justification, is particularly relevant to India’s situation. The doctrine holds that when a host state is either unwilling or unable to address a threat emanating from its territory, the threatened state may exercise its right of self-defense by acting on the host state’s territory. Israel has applied this doctrine to justify operations in Lebanon (Hezbollah), the Palestinian territories (Hamas), Syria (various Iranian-backed militias), and Iran (nuclear program). The United States has applied it to justify drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The doctrine’s legal status is contested, with many international law scholars arguing that it has not achieved the threshold of acceptance necessary to constitute customary international law. But through repeated practice and legal argumentation, Israel and the United States have incrementally strengthened the doctrine’s normative weight.

India’s situation presents arguably the strongest case for the “unwilling or unable” doctrine of any country currently conducting targeted killings. Pakistan has not merely failed to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure on its soil; it has, according to extensive evidence compiled by the Financial Action Task Force, the UN Security Council, and multiple national intelligence assessments, actively supported, funded, and directed the organizations that attack India. The ISI’s relationship with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed is not a case of state inability but of state complicity. If any state were to invoke the “unwilling or unable” doctrine with moral and evidentiary force, India has the strongest claim. Yet India cannot invoke it because doing so would require acknowledging the operations the doctrine would justify. The legal argument that would most powerfully support India’s position in international forums is precisely the argument that India’s denial posture prevents it from making.

This creates what legal scholars might call a “self-imposed legal disarmament.” India fights on the terrain of international legal discourse with both hands tied behind its back, not because international law is inherently hostile to its position, but because its own denial strategy prevents it from making the arguments that international law accommodates. Meanwhile, Israel and the United States have invested decades in building legal arguments that increasingly shape how international bodies, academic communities, and allied governments think about the permissibility of targeted killings. India’s absence from this conversation means that the norms being established may not account for India’s specific circumstances, the nuclear context, the state-sponsorship dimension, the scale of provocation, in ways that India would want them to if it were participating.

The international legal dimension also involves accountability for individual operators. Under international criminal law, individuals who participate in targeted killings could, theoretically, face prosecution before the International Criminal Court if the killings are deemed to violate international humanitarian law. Israel has provided its operatives with a domestic legal shield through the Supreme Court’s framework: operations conducted within the Court’s parameters are lawful under Israeli law, which provides a defense against ICC prosecution. India’s operatives have no such shield. If an Indian operative or an operative acting on India’s behalf were to be charged before an international tribunal, India could not argue that the operation was conducted within a domestic legal framework because no such framework exists. That individual would be legally naked before the international tribunal, and India’s government would be unable to provide institutional protection without acknowledging the institutional relationship it has spent years denying. This vulnerability is not theoretical; it is the logical endpoint of the legal vacuum that India’s denial posture creates.

Dimension Six: Media Relationship

Israel’s relationship with its domestic media regarding targeted killings is complex, adversarial in form but cooperative in practice. Israeli military censorship (the Tzahal censor) reviews publications related to national security, but its scope has narrowed over decades, and Israeli journalists regularly publish detailed accounts of Mossad operations. Ronen Bergman’s reporting, which included interviews with former Mossad directors, named agents, and detailed operational accounts, was published without legal obstruction. Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv’s earlier work similarly documented Mossad’s operations with a level of specificity that would be impossible in the Indian context. Israeli media outlets (Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv, Channel 12) regularly report on targeted killing operations, often within days of their occurrence, citing “security sources” in a pattern of managed disclosure that serves both the media’s informational function and the security establishment’s interest in demonstrating capability. The relationship is not one of full access; Israeli journalists do not embed with Mossad teams, and ongoing operations remain classified. But the retrospective access is sufficient to create a body of publicly available information that enables democratic debate.

India’s relationship with its domestic media regarding the alleged shadow war is, by contrast, characterized by complete opacity. No Indian journalist has published a sourced account of the program’s institutional architecture. No former RAW officer has provided on-the-record interviews about operational details. The closest India’s media comes to engagement with the topic is reporting on Pakistani allegations, The Guardian’s investigation, or the diplomatic crises in Canada and the United States, always from a position of covering others’ claims rather than independently investigating India’s actions. Indian media outlets that report on national security (The Hindu, The Indian Express, NDTV, The Print) have published analysis of the shadow war phenomenon, but their analysis is based on the same open-source Pakistani police reports and international media investigations that anyone can access. No Indian journalist has added institutional insider knowledge to the public record.

The contrast is not primarily about press freedom in the abstract; both India and Israel have vibrant, competitive media landscapes. The contrast is about institutional culture. Israel’s security establishment has, over decades, developed a relationship with selected journalists that involves managed disclosure. Mossad’s former directors (Efraim Halevy, Meir Dagan, Tamir Pardo) have published memoirs, given interviews, and engaged in public debate about the program’s history and principles. RAW’s former directors maintain near-complete silence on operational matters. The institutional culture of India’s intelligence services regards any public engagement as betrayal, while Israel’s intelligence culture has evolved toward a model where selective engagement strengthens public support for the program.

The consequence for democratic governance is direct. Israeli citizens have access to enough information about their country’s targeted killing program to form opinions, challenge decisions, and hold elected officials accountable for authorizing specific operations. Indian citizens have access to no domestically sourced information about their country’s alleged program and must rely on foreign media reports, Pakistani police records, and diplomatic allegations to understand what their own government may be doing in their name. The information asymmetry between the Indian government and Indian citizens regarding the shadow war is among the widest in any functioning democracy.

The media dimension also affects international perception. Israel’s semi-transparent relationship with its press means that international media can draw on Israeli sources when covering Mossad operations, creating a narrative ecosystem where Israeli perspectives, justifications, and strategic rationales are represented in global coverage. When the New York Times covers a Mossad operation, it can cite Israeli sources who provide context, rationalization, and strategic framing that shapes how the operation is perceived internationally. India’s total opacity means that when international media covers the shadow war, the only available sources are Pakistani police reports, Pakistani victims’ families, and Western intelligence assessments. India’s perspective, its strategic rationale, its justification, its operational logic is entirely absent from the global narrative. The result is that international coverage of India’s alleged operations is framed primarily through the lens of victimhood (Pakistani casualties), sovereignty violation (operations on foreign soil), and diplomatic scandal (Canada, the US), with no counterbalancing narrative of strategic necessity, self-defense, or counter-terrorism effectiveness. Israel has invested decades in ensuring that its narrative frames international coverage of its operations. India has invested nothing, because investing in narrative framing would require acknowledging the operations the narrative is supposed to frame.

This absence creates a compounding problem. Each international media report that goes unanswered by India’s government contributes to a cumulative narrative in which India is a state that kills people secretly and lies about it. Israel, by managing disclosure, has created an alternative narrative in which it is a state that kills enemies in self-defense within a legal and moral framework that, while contested, is at least articulated. The narrative difference has real diplomatic consequences: allied governments that might privately support India’s counter-terrorism objectives have difficulty publicly defending operations that India itself refuses to acknowledge. The United States, for example, has its own extensive history of targeted killings and might view India’s program with strategic sympathy, but it cannot publicly support operations that India denies conducting. Israel’s managed-disclosure model solves this problem by giving allies a narrative to support; India’s total-denial model denies allies even that minimal political cover.

Dimension Seven: Diplomatic Consequences Management

Both programs generate diplomatic consequences, but the consequences differ in severity and the management strategies differ in sophistication.

Israel has managed the diplomatic consequences of its targeted killing program across five decades with a strategy that combines denial on specific operations, general deterrence messaging (signaling that Israel will pursue its enemies everywhere), alliance management (maintaining US support as a shield against UN action), and selective concession (occasionally apologizing or compensating when operations go badly wrong in friendly countries). The Lillehammer affair of 1973, where Mossad killed an innocent man in Norway, produced arrests of Israeli agents, diplomatic protests from Norway, and a formal apology that repaired the bilateral relationship. The Dubai assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January 2010, which involved the use of forged passports from allied countries (UK, Ireland, Australia, Germany), generated significant diplomatic protests, the expulsion of Israeli diplomats from several countries, and a period of recalibration by Mossad regarding passport fraud. In both cases, the diplomatic damage was contained because Israel’s broader alliance structure (US strategic partnership, European economic relationships) provided buffers that absorbed the specific operational friction. Israel has also benefited from the fact that its targets are, overwhelmingly, individuals associated with groups (Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iranian nuclear program) that most Western governments also consider threats, creating a baseline of sympathetic understanding for the operations even when the methods are criticized.

India’s diplomatic consequences management is being tested in real time, and the results are mixed. The Canada crisis triggered by the Nijjar killing and the subsequent Pannun plot allegations produced the most severe diplomatic fallout India has faced from the shadow war. Canada expelled Indian diplomats, India retaliated with equivalent expulsions, and the bilateral relationship deteriorated to its lowest point in decades. The US indictment of an Indian national connected to the alleged Pannun plot created additional pressure, though the US-India strategic relationship (grounded in shared concerns about China) has so far absorbed the friction without fundamental disruption. India’s diplomatic management strategy relies on three elements: categorical denial (maintaining that the allegations are fabrications), strategic importance (betting that India’s value as a partner against China will prevent allies from imposing meaningful consequences), and counter-accusation (framing Pakistan and Khalistani separatists as the real threats). This strategy has worked to the extent that no major power has imposed sanctions on India or formally downgraded the relationship. But it has also created a pattern where India’s credibility on the specific question of covert operations has been damaged, even as its broader diplomatic standing has been maintained.

The comparison reveals different approaches to the same problem. Israel absorbs diplomatic friction through a combination of strategic alliances, selective concession, and the gradual normalization of its targeted killing program over five decades. The program’s longevity has, paradoxically, reduced the diplomatic shock of individual operations; the world expects Israel to conduct targeted killings, and the diplomatic consequences have become routinized. India’s program is newer, and each revelation generates fresh diplomatic shock. India has not yet developed the alliance-management infrastructure, the managed-disclosure mechanisms, or the normalization trajectory that Israel has built over half a century. Whether India will develop these mechanisms over time, or whether the total-denial posture will prevent them from emerging, is among the most consequential open questions in Indian foreign policy.

The normalization trajectory deserves specific attention because it illustrates a path that India might follow if it shifts from total denial toward managed disclosure. When Mossad’s early operations in Europe became public through the Lillehammer arrests and subsequent trials, the diplomatic reactions were severe: Norway prosecuted Israeli agents, European governments protested, and Israel’s intelligence community faced its first major public accountability moment. Over the following decades, as Israel continued operations and gradually allowed more information to enter the public domain, the diplomatic reactions became progressively muted. By the time Mossad assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010, the diplomatic response (passport-related expulsions) was significant but contained, and it dissipated within months. By the time of the Fakhrizadeh operation in 2020, the diplomatic response was minimal: expressions of concern from some European governments, silence from the United States, and no lasting consequences. The normalization occurred not because the operations became less controversial but because their repetition, combined with Israel’s strategic value to Western governments, gradually shifted the baseline of acceptable state behavior. India’s program is at the beginning of this trajectory. The intense diplomatic reactions to the Nijjar killing and the Pannun plot correspond to the Lillehammer-era shock of a newly visible program. If the historical parallel holds, and if India can manage the transitional period, the diplomatic consequences may diminish over time as the program becomes an expected feature of India’s security posture rather than a shocking revelation.

The cost of this transition, however, should not be understated. Israel’s normalization trajectory consumed decades and required the absorption of significant diplomatic damage during the transitional period. Israel also benefited from a unique combination of strategic positioning (indispensable US ally during the Cold War and after), moral authority (Holocaust legacy, constant terrorist threat), and institutional investment in alliance management. India possesses some of these advantages (growing strategic importance as a counterbalance to China) but lacks others (no equivalent moral-authority narrative, limited history of alliance management in the intelligence domain). The transition from diplomatic shock to diplomatic normalization is neither automatic nor guaranteed.

Dimension Eight: Strategic Effectiveness

The strategic effectiveness of each program must be assessed against each program’s stated or implied objectives, and this is where the comparison becomes most analytically contested.

Israel’s targeted killing program has been assessed against multiple metrics. Supporters point to the degradation of Palestinian armed groups’ operational capability following the decapitation of their leadership cadres: Hamas’s military effectiveness declined measurably after the assassinations of Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in 2004, and Hezbollah’s cross-border attack capability was reduced following the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in February 2008. The campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Western intelligence assessments, delayed Iran’s nuclear program by an estimated two to five years. Critics, including David Kilcullen and other counter-insurgency theorists, argue that the program’s tactical successes mask strategic failure: Hamas remains in power in Gaza, Hezbollah remains the most capable non-state military force in the Middle East, and Iran’s nuclear program continued advancing despite the assassinations. The strongest argument against effectiveness is the retaliatory cycle: each assassination generates a revenge imperative within the targeted organization that may, over time, produce more violence than the assassination prevented. The effectiveness debate is unresolved, partly because effectiveness depends on the counterfactual (what would have happened without the assassinations), which is inherently unprovable.

India’s program is too new and too deniable for rigorous effectiveness assessment, but preliminary indicators can be identified. On the targeting side, the program has eliminated dozens of individuals associated with attacks against India, reducing the operational capability of groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed by removing experienced commanders who cannot easily be replaced. The unprecedented acceleration of eliminations in 2026 suggests either growing operational capability or a deliberate escalation, either of which implies institutional confidence in the program’s value. On the deterrence side, the program may be producing behavioral changes among surviving terrorists: reports from Pakistani cities suggest that designated terrorists are avoiding mosques, changing residences frequently, and limiting their public exposure, all indicators that the program has created a fear effect that constrains the targets’ operational freedom. On the strategic side, the program has not prevented cross-border terrorism entirely; the Pahalgam attack occurred despite the ongoing campaign, suggesting that the program degrades but does not eliminate the threat. The US drone program comparison provides additional context: the US killed far more people through drone strikes in Pakistan than India’s alleged program has killed through close-range operations, yet the drone campaign did not eliminate the Taliban or al-Qaeda, suggesting inherent limits on what targeted killing, regardless of method, can achieve.

The effectiveness comparison is further complicated by the different threat environments. Israel faces multiple armed groups across multiple borders (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran), each with distinct capabilities and political contexts. India faces primarily one source of threat: Pakistan-based militant organizations directed against Indian territory and Indian interests. Israel’s program must address a distributed, multi-front threat; India’s program targets a geographically concentrated one. This structural difference means that operational success (killing specific targets) may translate more directly into strategic effect for India than for Israel, because the target population is smaller and more concentrated. But it also means that India’s program carries nuclear-escalation risk (operating on the territory of a nuclear-armed adversary) that Israel’s generally does not (with the partial exception of operations inside Iran).

A further effectiveness dimension involves organizational resilience. Terror organizations differ in their ability to replace eliminated leaders, and this resilience determines how much strategic value each elimination provides. Hamas has demonstrated significant leadership resilience: the organization survived the assassinations of its founder Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi within months of each other in 2004, reconstituting its leadership cadre and maintaining its governance functions in Gaza. Hezbollah similarly absorbed the loss of Imad Mughniyeh, its military commander, in 2008 and continued operating at a high level. The organizations Israel targets have deep bench strength, institutional memory, and governance functions that provide organizational continuity beyond any individual leader. The organizations India’s shadow war allegedly targets may be less resilient. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, while institutionally durable, depend heavily on experienced mid-level commanders who manage operational cells, maintain cross-border logistics, and recruit and train cadres. These mid-level operatives, who constitute the majority of reported shadow war targets, are harder to replace than top leadership because their value lies in specific knowledge (border-crossing routes, local contacts, safe-house networks) rather than organizational charisma. The shadow war’s focus on this operational layer may therefore produce greater organizational degradation per elimination than Mossad’s leadership-focused targeting model, though this hypothesis can only be tested against evidence that India’s total denial prevents from being assembled.

The temporal dimension of effectiveness also differs. Mossad’s program has been sustained long enough to observe cyclical patterns: an organization is degraded by eliminations, recovers, adapts, and is degraded again. Hamas has been through multiple such cycles since the 1990s. The long-term pattern suggests that targeted killing can suppress an organization’s capability but cannot eliminate it as a strategic threat. India’s program is too young to have produced observable recovery cycles among its targets, making it impossible to assess whether the current degradation of LeT and JeM will prove temporary or lasting. The precedent from Israel’s experience suggests that degradation without political resolution of the underlying conflict is inherently temporary, a lesson that India’s strategic planners may not yet have fully internalized.

Where the Comparison Breaks Down

The eight-dimension comparison illuminates significant parallels and divergences, but it also has analytical limits that this section addresses transparently.

The first limit is threat-environment asymmetry. Israel is a small country surrounded by hostile territories, facing threats from non-state actors that are, in some cases, quasi-state entities with territorial control (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon). India is a continental power facing cross-border terrorism from a specific adversary state. The scale, geography, and political dynamics of the two threat environments differ fundamentally. Israel’s targeted killing program operates against organizations that control territory and have governance functions; India’s operates against individuals who are sheltered by a state that simultaneously sponsors and denies sponsoring them. The comparison is productive for understanding institutional design, accountability mechanisms, and operational methodology, but it cannot resolve questions about strategic effectiveness because the strategic contexts are too different to support direct comparison.

The second limit involves nuclear context. India’s shadow war operates against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with a history of nuclear brinkmanship, fragile civilian-military relations, and a security establishment that views India as an existential threat. Israel’s operations have occurred against non-nuclear adversaries (with the exception of Iran, which is nuclear-aspirant rather than nuclear-armed). The nuclear dimension introduces an escalation risk to India’s program that has no equivalent in Israel’s. Every operation in Pakistan carries a non-zero probability, however small, of triggering a crisis that escalates beyond the sub-conventional level. The 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, which included missile exchanges and aerial combat between two nuclear-armed states, demonstrated that the escalation ladder between sub-conventional operations and conventional war is shorter than deterrence theorists assumed. Israel’s operations, by contrast, occur against adversaries who lack the capability to threaten Israel’s existence through conventional retaliation, let alone nuclear escalation. This asymmetry means that the risk calculus for India’s program includes variables that Israel’s does not, and any assessment of strategic effectiveness must account for this differential risk profile.

The third limit is temporal. Mossad’s program has operated for over fifty years and has passed through multiple eras, each with distinct characteristics. India’s program, in its current form, appears to have accelerated significantly after 2022 and is perhaps only four years old in its current operational tempo. Comparing a mature, institutionally embedded program with a nascent one introduces lifecycle-stage bias. Many features of Mossad’s program, including its legal framework, its media relationships, and its alliance-management sophistication, developed over decades of operational experience. India’s program may eventually develop similar features, or it may not. Judging the Indian program by the standards of Mossad’s current institutional maturity may be premature.

These limits do not invalidate the comparison. They define its boundaries. The comparison is most productive for understanding institutional design choices (accountability, attribution, legal architecture) and least productive for comparing strategic outcomes across fundamentally different threat environments.

A fourth limit concerns the international alliance structure within which each program operates. Israel’s closest ally, the United States, has conducted its own extensive targeted killing program (the drone campaign that killed thousands in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia). This shared practice creates a basis of mutual understanding between Washington and Jerusalem: the US cannot condemn Israeli targeted killings without condemning its own, and both governments have developed complementary legal arguments for the practice. India’s closest strategic partners include both the United States (which has its own targeted killing precedent) and countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia (which have experienced Indian operations on or near their soil). The alliance dynamics are more complex for India than for Israel because India’s operations have generated direct friction with allies who are simultaneously strategic partners. Israel’s operations typically target groups that Western allies also consider threats; India’s operations in Canada targeted individuals whose status (separatist activist versus terrorist) is contested by the host country’s government. The alliance-environment difference shapes how diplomatic consequences are managed and absorbed.

A fifth analytical limit involves domestic political context. Israel’s targeted killing program enjoys broad domestic support across the political spectrum. Polls consistently show that large majorities of Israeli citizens support the program, partly because the program is publicly acknowledged (enabling informed opinion formation) and partly because the threats it addresses (rocket attacks, suicide bombings, nuclear proliferation) are experienced directly by Israeli civilians. India’s domestic political context is different. Public opinion on the shadow war, to the extent it can be measured given the absence of official acknowledgment, appears supportive among a significant portion of the population, particularly those who view Pakistan-based terrorism as an existential threat. But the support is based on inference and media reports rather than official confirmation, creating a fragile political foundation that could shift rapidly if a high-profile failure, a targeting error that kills the wrong person or produces civilian casualties, becomes public without the institutional defenses (legal framework, oversight mechanism, managed narrative) that Israel has built. The political sustainability of each program rests on different foundations: Israel’s on informed democratic consent, India’s on patriotic inference. The latter is more vulnerable to disruption.

What India Could Learn from Israel’s Accountability Model

The comparison raises a direct policy question: should India adopt elements of Israel’s accountability model, specifically, a domestic legal framework, managed media disclosure, and semi-official attribution? The question is not academic. The diplomatic crises in Canada and the United States have demonstrated that total denial has limits as a long-term strategy, and the absence of domestic accountability mechanisms creates risks that may exceed the risks that accountability would introduce.

Israel’s experience offers three specific lessons.

The first is that legal frameworks protect the program as much as they constrain it. Israel’s 2006 Supreme Court ruling is often characterized as a restriction on targeted killings, and it is. But it is also a legitimization of targeted killings within defined parameters. The ruling gave the Israeli security establishment something it had previously lacked: judicial endorsement of the principle that targeted killings can be lawful. That endorsement strengthened the program’s domestic political support, provided legal protection to operatives, and gave Israel a defensible position in international legal forums. India’s lack of a legal framework means that its program has no judicial legitimization, no legal protection for operatives who might be identified abroad (as happened with the indictment of an Indian national in the US), and no defensible position if international legal pressure intensifies.

The second lesson involves institutional learning. Israel’s managed-disclosure model enables the security establishment to learn from its mistakes. The Lillehammer affair produced institutional reforms in target-identification protocols. The Dubai passport scandal produced reforms in cover-identity management. These reforms were possible because the failures became public knowledge through the media, were examined by oversight bodies, and generated institutional pressure for correction. India’s total-denial model prevents equivalent learning. If an operation has produced collateral damage, targeted the wrong individual, or compromised an intelligence network, no mechanism exists for the error to be surfaced and corrected. The result is a program that may be repeating mistakes that an accountability-enabled program would have corrected.

The third lesson is about long-term sustainability. Israel’s program has survived for over fifty years in part because it has achieved a degree of domestic legitimacy through legal frameworks, media engagement, and political accountability. The Israeli public broadly supports targeted killings because the program is discussed, debated, and understood within the political system. India’s program operates without any public engagement or democratic legitimacy. Its sustainability depends entirely on the government’s ability to maintain denial indefinitely, a proposition that is already strained by Canadian investigations, US indictments, and international media reporting. If denial collapses, and the diplomatic trajectory suggests that it may, the program will face a legitimacy crisis that it has no institutional defenses to manage. Israel built those defenses over decades. India has built none.

These lessons do not argue that India should replicate Israel’s model wholesale. India’s strategic context, democratic institutions, and threat environment are distinct. But they argue that total deniability, while operationally convenient in the short term, creates long-term vulnerabilities that a more mature accountability architecture would address. The challenge for Indian policymakers is whether they can develop accountability mechanisms without sacrificing the operational advantages that deniability currently provides, a balance that Israel, over five decades, has managed with imperfect but measurable success.

The Israeli model also illustrates the relationship between accountability and public support. Paradoxically, Israel’s willingness to allow domestic debate about its targeted killing program has strengthened, not weakened, public support. When Israeli citizens can read about Mossad operations, debate their ethics in newspaper columns, and hear former intelligence chiefs justify specific decisions, they become invested in the program’s success and understanding of its necessity. The secrecy around India’s program denies Indian citizens this same investment. If the program were to be officially acknowledged, the initial diplomatic and political shock would eventually give way to a domestic conversation about counter-terrorism methodology that could strengthen democratic support for the program over time. Israel’s trajectory from secret operations to semi-public doctrine occurred over decades, driven partly by investigative journalism and partly by deliberate institutional evolution within the security establishment. India could learn from this trajectory without replicating its specific timeline.

An additional lesson concerns international norm-setting. By engaging with international legal arguments, Israel has positioned itself to influence the development of international norms governing targeted killings. Israel’s legal positions, however contested, are part of the global conversation. India’s silence means that international norms in this area are being shaped by Israel’s practice, the US drone program’s practice, and academic commentary, without any contribution from India despite India being one of the most active practitioners. If India’s strategic interests would be served by international norms that legitimate targeted killings against state-sponsored terrorists on foreign soil (a proposition that seems self-evidently true), then India’s refusal to articulate legal positions that advance those norms represents a strategic failure that compounds over time. Every year that India remains silent is a year in which other actors shape the normative landscape in ways that may not favor India’s interests.

The counter-argument, which must be acknowledged, is that accountability mechanisms create constraints, and constraints reduce operational flexibility. Israel’s 2006 Supreme Court ruling, by establishing proportionality requirements and mandating post-operation investigations, imposed costs on the security establishment that a program operating without such constraints would not bear. India’s total denial preserves maximum operational freedom: no proportionality requirement limits target selection, no post-operation investigation mandates evidence preservation, no judicial review threatens to declare specific operations unlawful. For a program operating in one of the world’s most hostile environments (nuclear-armed Pakistan with a powerful intelligence service, the ISI, actively hunting for evidence of Indian operations), operational flexibility is not a trivial advantage. The question is whether the long-term costs of the accountability vacuum (diplomatic vulnerability, democratic deficit, institutional learning failure) exceed the short-term benefits of unconstrained operational freedom. Israel’s fifty-year experience suggests they do, but India’s leadership appears to have reached a different calculation, at least for now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How does India’s shadow war compare to Mossad’s operations?

India’s shadow war and Mossad’s targeted killing program share the foundational premise that terrorists sheltered on foreign soil can be killed there. Both programs target specific individuals, both use deniable methods, and both have produced diplomatic consequences for the sponsoring state. The central divergence is in accountability: Israel operates within a framework of semi-official acknowledgment, a domestic legal architecture validated by the Supreme Court, managed media disclosure, and institutional mechanisms for reviewing errors. India operates in total deniability, with no legal framework, no media engagement, no judicial review, and no known mechanism for institutional learning from operational failures. The comparison across eight dimensions reveals that India has adopted Israel’s operational logic without adopting the transparency mechanisms that make Israel’s program compatible with democratic governance.

Q: Did India learn from Israel’s targeted killing program?

The question of direct doctrinal transfer is unresolved. The Mossad-RAW intelligence partnership includes publicly documented defense cooperation, technology transfer (surveillance systems, missile technology, drone technology), and training programs. Whether this cooperation extends to operational methodology for targeted killings, whether Mossad provided guidance on how to plan, authorize, and execute covert elimination operations, remains classified. What can be said is that the operational parallels are striking: both programs have used motorcycle-borne operatives, both target individuals at predictable locations, both rely on close-range engagement rather than remote methods, and both maintain ambiguous attribution postures. Whether these parallels reflect direct transfer or independent convergence on the same tactical solutions is a question that only declassified records could answer.

Q: Does Israel acknowledge its targeted killings?

Israel practices what analysts call semi-official acknowledgment. The government rarely issues formal statements claiming specific operations, but it allows Israeli media to report extensively on operational details, permits former intelligence officials to publish memoirs describing past operations, and has allowed judicial review of the program’s legal framework. The net effect is that Israel’s targeted killing program is publicly known, domestically debated, and subject to legal constraints, even though individual operations are not officially attributed. The contrast with India is stark: India’s government categorically denies all involvement in the targeted killings of designated terrorists on Pakistani soil, and no Indian official, journalist, or court has been granted access to the program’s institutional structure.

Q: Why does India deny involvement while Israel semi-acknowledges?

The different attribution strategies reflect different strategic calculations. Israel’s semi-acknowledgment serves a deterrence function: by allowing it to be known that Mossad reaches everywhere, Israel signals to adversaries that attacking Israel will produce lethal consequences regardless of geography. India’s total denial serves a diplomatic function: by refusing to acknowledge operations on Pakistani soil, India avoids triggering a formal casus belli with a nuclear-armed neighbor. The nuclear context is the critical variable. Israel’s adversaries lack the capability to threaten Israel’s existence through retaliation for targeted killings. Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and a military doctrine that contemplates their use under certain escalation scenarios. India’s denial posture is, in part, a nuclear-risk management strategy: by refusing to acknowledge operations, India prevents Pakistan’s military establishment from framing the operations as acts of war that require military escalation.

Q: Which country’s approach is more effective?

Effectiveness depends on the metric. On target elimination, both programs are effective: they locate and kill specific individuals. On organizational degradation, Israel’s program has demonstrably reduced the operational capability of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, though none of these targets has been eliminated as a threat. India’s program has removed experienced commanders from LeT, JeM, and Hizbul Mujahideen, but cross-border terrorism has not ceased. On deterrence, both programs create fear effects among surviving targets, but neither has eliminated the motivation for adversaries to attack. On democratic accountability, Israel’s approach is more effective because it enables institutional learning, legal review, and public debate, none of which India’s total-denial approach permits. On operational flexibility, India’s denial posture provides greater freedom because no legal or institutional constraints limit future operations, whereas Israel’s legal framework creates boundaries that the security establishment must at least acknowledge. The trade-off between accountability and flexibility is the fundamental tension that any democracy conducting targeted killings must navigate, and Israel and India have chosen opposite positions on the spectrum.

Q: Do India and Israel share intelligence on counter-terrorism?

India-Israel defense cooperation is publicly documented and extensive. Israel is among India’s largest defense suppliers, providing surveillance systems, missile defense technology, drone platforms, and communication intercept equipment. Joint military exercises occur regularly. The intelligence dimension is less documented but widely inferred: Israeli defense industry sales to India include surveillance and signals-intercept systems whose effective use requires operational training and intelligence-sharing protocols. Whether the intelligence partnership extends to operational collaboration on the shadow war, with Mossad providing targeting intelligence, methodological guidance, or logistical support for specific operations, is unknown. The intelligence alliance covers this relationship in detail, though the classified nature of the cooperation means that analysis must rely on inference from publicly available evidence.

Q: What legal framework does Israel use for targeted killings?

Israel’s legal framework rests on the Supreme Court’s December 2006 ruling, which established four conditions for lawful targeted killings: the target must be a civilian directly participating in hostilities, arrest must be infeasible, expected civilian harm must be proportionate to military advantage, and an independent investigation must follow each operation. The ruling did not ban targeted killings; it conditionally authorized them within these parameters. Beyond the Court’s ruling, Israeli military law provides additional authority, and the Attorney General’s office reviews certain operations for legal compliance. The framework is imperfect (critics argue that the proportionality assessments are conducted internally and that post-operation investigations are inconsistent), but its existence creates legal boundaries that shape institutional behavior.

Q: Does India have any legal framework for the shadow war?

No. India has no statute, executive order, judicial ruling, or published policy document that authorizes, regulates, or constrains targeted killings abroad. The Research and Analysis Wing operates under the Cabinet Secretariat with a mandate that, as publicly understood, covers intelligence gathering. No court has been asked to rule on the legality of extraterritorial operations. The absence of a framework is logically tied to India’s total-denial posture: creating a framework would require acknowledging the operations it would govern, which would contradict the denial strategy. George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment has described this as India’s “accountability vacuum,” a structural absence that prevents democratic oversight of the most consequential security operations a democracy can conduct.

Q: How do Mossad’s operational methods differ from RAW’s alleged methods?

Mossad has employed a diverse repertoire across five decades: pistol shootings, car bombs, poisonings (the attempted assassination of Khaled Mashal in Amman using a nerve agent), missile strikes from helicopters, remotely triggered explosions, magnetic bombs attached by motorcycle riders, and reportedly a robotic machine gun in the Fakhrizadeh operation. This diversity reflects technological advancement, institutional maturity, and adaptation to varied operational environments. India’s alleged operations display remarkable methodological consistency: motorcycle-borne gunmen firing at close range. The uniformity suggests either a standardized doctrine or an environment (Pakistani cities with high motorcycle density and limited surveillance) that favors a single optimal approach. The difference in methodological diversity reflects the difference in institutional age: Mossad has had fifty years to develop alternatives, while India’s program appears to be in its early operational phase.

Q: Has the India-Israel comparison been studied academically?

Systematic academic comparison of the two programs is limited, partly because India’s total denial makes the Indian side of the comparison difficult to document through traditional scholarly methods. Daniel Byman of Brookings has written on comparative targeted killing effectiveness, and Avery Plaw’s “Targeting Terrorists” provides a framework for comparing legal and ethical dimensions across multiple countries. But no published academic study has conducted the eight-dimension comparative analysis this article presents. Most existing comparisons are found in opinion columns or brief passages within longer works, noting the surface-level parallel without systematically examining each dimension of convergence and divergence.

Q: Could India adopt Israel’s legal framework?

Technically, India could establish a legal framework through legislation, executive order, or judicial ruling. An Indian equivalent of the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court ruling could establish conditions under which targeted killings abroad are permissible, create proportionality requirements, mandate post-operation reviews, and provide legal protection to operatives. The obstacle is political, not legal: creating a framework requires acknowledging the operations, which contradicts the denial strategy. The political calculation is that the costs of acknowledgment (diplomatic crisis with Pakistan, international legal scrutiny, domestic political debate) exceed the benefits of legal architecture (judicial legitimization, operational accountability, legal protection for agents). Whether this calculation will change as international pressure intensifies, particularly from allies like the United States and Canada, is one of the central open questions in India’s foreign policy trajectory.

Q: What is the biggest risk of India’s total-denial approach?

The biggest risk is exposure without preparation. Israel’s gradual, managed disclosure over five decades built institutional defenses: legal frameworks, public support, alliance management protocols, and diplomatic contingency plans. If India’s denial collapses suddenly, through a diplomatic crisis, a leaked document, or a captured operative, the program will face public scrutiny without any of these defenses. The Canadian crisis demonstrated a preview: when allegations surfaced with sufficient credibility, India had no legal framework to invoke, no managed-disclosure protocol to activate, and no institutional narrative to deploy beyond categorical denial. The risk is not that denial will fail on any specific allegation; it is that cumulative credible allegations will erode the denial posture until it collapses entirely, exposing the program to scrutiny that it has no institutional capacity to manage.

Q: Is Mossad more effective than RAW at targeted killings?

Mossad has a longer track record, more operational experience, greater technological resources, and a more diverse methodological repertoire than RAW is believed to possess. But effectiveness is contextual, not absolute. Mossad operates in environments (European cities, Middle Eastern capitals, Iranian territory) that present different challenges than the Pakistani urban environments where India’s program allegedly operates. RAW’s alleged success in conducting dozens of operations in Pakistani cities without a single operative being apprehended (as far as public reporting indicates) represents a remarkable operational achievement in one of the world’s most hostile counter-intelligence environments. Comparing the two agencies on effectiveness requires specifying effectiveness at what: target elimination, operational security, organizational degradation, strategic deterrence, or democratic accountability. Each metric produces a different answer.

Q: What does the comparison reveal about democracy and state violence?

The comparison reveals that democracy does not prevent targeted killings; it shapes how they are conducted, acknowledged, and governed. Both India and Israel are democracies that have chosen to kill individuals on foreign soil. The difference lies not in the decision to kill but in the institutional architecture surrounding the decision. Israel has built a framework that, however imperfectly, subjects the killing to legal constraints, political accountability, and public debate. India has avoided building any such framework, operating in a space where the most consequential security actions a state can take occur without any democratic oversight. The comparison suggests that the question is not whether democracies will conduct targeted killings (several do) but whether they will do so within or outside the structures of democratic governance. Israel and India represent the two endpoints of that spectrum.

Q: How has the comparison evolved since India’s program became more visible?

India’s program has become significantly more visible through three developments: The Guardian’s investigative reporting, Canada’s allegations and diplomatic actions, and the US indictment of an Indian national in connection with the Pannun plot. Each development has intensified the comparison with Israel because each demonstrates the limits of India’s total-denial posture. Israel’s managed-disclosure model provides a contrasting case study that analysts increasingly cite when discussing India’s options. The comparison has shifted from a theoretical exercise (what if India developed a program like Israel’s?) to a practical policy question (should India develop accountability mechanisms before its denial posture collapses?).

Q: Why is the motorcycle method used by both countries?

Motorcycles solve the same tactical problems in both Tehran and Pakistani cities. They navigate congested traffic faster than cars. They blend into urban environments where millions of motorcycles operate daily. They accommodate two riders (a driver and a shooter). They can escape through gaps in traffic that pursuing vehicles cannot follow through. They are disposable after the operation. The convergence on motorcycles may reflect direct methodological transfer through the Mossad-RAW partnership, or it may reflect independent convergence on the optimal vehicle for close-range urban operations. The motorcycle pattern analysis documents the method’s tactical advantages in detail.

Q: What would happen if India acknowledged the shadow war?

Acknowledgment would trigger immediate diplomatic consequences: Pakistan would formally protest, demand UN Security Council action, and potentially use the acknowledgment as justification for military escalation. But acknowledgment would also create opportunities: India could develop a legal framework that legitimizes the operations domestically and provides a defensible position internationally. India could invoke Article 51 self-defense arguments, pointing to Pakistan’s demonstrated unwillingness or inability to dismantle terrorist infrastructure on its soil. India could build alliance-management protocols with countries like the United States and Canada, framing the operations within the broader counter-terrorism framework that those countries support. The trade-off between the costs and benefits of acknowledgment is complex, and India’s current leadership appears to have calculated that the costs exceed the benefits. Whether future leaders will reach the same conclusion, particularly if diplomatic pressure continues to escalate, remains uncertain.

Q: Can India maintain total denial indefinitely?

The trajectory of evidence accumulation suggests that maintaining total denial will become progressively more difficult. Canadian investigations have produced credible evidence. US federal prosecutors have secured an indictment. The Guardian’s investigation named specific cases. Pakistani police records provide detailed descriptions of dozens of operations. Former intelligence officials from allied countries have discussed Indian operations in public forums. Each new data point erodes the denial posture’s credibility. Israel’s experience suggests that denial is a temporary strategy, not a permanent one: Israel maintained ambiguity about its nuclear weapons program for decades before the program’s existence became an open secret, and Israel maintained ambiguity about specific Mossad operations before Bergman’s reporting made many of them public. The question is not whether India’s denial will erode but when, and whether India will have built alternative institutional defenses before it does.

Q: What happens if India’s denial collapses without preparation?

Unprepared exposure would create a multi-front crisis. Domestically, the absence of a legal framework would raise immediate constitutional questions about the authority under which the operations were conducted. Internationally, the absence of legal arguments would leave India without defensible positions in forums like the UN, the ICJ, or bilateral diplomatic negotiations. Operationally, the security establishment would face questions about targeting decisions, collateral damage, and accountability that it has no institutional capacity to answer. The contrast with Israel is instructive: when individual Mossad operations are exposed, Israel has legal frameworks, institutional narratives, and alliance-management protocols to deploy. India has none of these. Building them after exposure, rather than before, would be significantly more costly and significantly less effective.

Q: Is this comparison relevant beyond India and Israel?

The comparison is relevant to any democracy that has conducted, is conducting, or may in the future conduct targeted killings abroad. The United States has its own version (the drone program), Russia has its own (the Salisbury poisoning and other operations), and France has reportedly conducted targeted killings in Africa. Each operates with a different accountability model. The India-Israel comparison is particularly instructive because it represents the two most distinct positions on the accountability spectrum among democracies: Israel at the managed-disclosure end and India at the total-denial end. Understanding the costs and benefits of each position helps policymakers in other democracies calibrate their own accountability approaches. The comparison is also relevant for international law scholars, who increasingly recognize that the legal framework for targeted killings is being shaped not by international treaties but by state practice, and India’s and Israel’s practices are among the most consequential contributions to that evolving body of precedent.

Q: How does the nuclear dimension change the India-Israel comparison?

The nuclear dimension is the single most important structural difference between the two programs and the primary reason that direct method-to-method comparison has limits. Israel conducts targeted killings against adversaries who cannot threaten Israel with nuclear retaliation. Even Iran, Israel’s most capable adversary and the subject of the most recent Mossad operations, is a nuclear-aspirant rather than a nuclear-armed state. India conducts its alleged operations on the territory of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with an estimated arsenal of 170 warheads, a history of nuclear brinkmanship, and a military doctrine that includes tactical nuclear use under certain escalation scenarios. Every operation on Pakistani soil introduces, however minimally, the possibility that Pakistan’s military establishment could interpret the cumulative campaign as an act of war requiring conventional or nuclear response. The 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan demonstrated that the escalation ladder between sub-conventional provocation and conventional military action is shorter than deterrence theorists assumed. Israel’s operations occur below the nuclear threshold because its adversaries lack nuclear weapons. India’s operations occur below the nuclear threshold because both sides have chosen to keep them there, a choice that is strategic rather than structural and could change under different political or military conditions. This nuclear context means that India’s cost-benefit calculus for each operation must include an escalation-risk variable that Israel’s does not, and that the strategic effectiveness of India’s program must be assessed not only in terms of targets eliminated but in terms of nuclear risk incurred per elimination.

Q: What role does Pakistan’s state sponsorship of terrorism play in the comparison?

Pakistan’s documented state sponsorship of terrorism is the variable that most strongly justifies India’s program and most powerfully distinguishes its situation from Israel’s. Israel’s adversaries, while dangerous, are primarily non-state actors that operate autonomously or with limited state support. Pakistan’s relationship with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed goes far beyond passive tolerance: the ISI has provided funding, training, weapons, logistical support, and operational direction to these organizations, as documented by the Financial Action Task Force, the UN Security Council’s sanctions committees, and the testimony of captured operatives (including David Headley, whose extensive debriefing by US authorities documented ISI’s role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks). The state-sponsorship dimension means that India is not merely dealing with non-state actors who happen to be located on foreign soil; it is dealing with state-directed violence laundered through non-state proxies to maintain deniability. Israel has faced state-sponsored terrorism (from Iran, through Hezbollah) but has never confronted a nuclear-armed state that simultaneously sponsors terrorism against it, denies doing so, and threatens nuclear escalation if attacked conventionally. India’s predicament is unique in this specific regard, and the uniqueness both strengthens the moral case for the shadow war and limits how much Israel’s institutional model can be directly applied. Israel built its legal and accountability frameworks for a program targeting non-state actors; India would need to build frameworks for a program targeting the products of state sponsorship, a fundamentally different challenge that no existing model fully addresses.

Q: How does the comparison shape our understanding of democratic counter-terrorism going forward?

The India-Israel comparison reshapes the standard narrative about democratic counter-terrorism in three ways. First, it demonstrates that the question is not whether democracies will conduct targeted killings (both India and Israel are democracies; both kill) but how they will govern the practice. The governance architecture, not the killing itself, is where democratic values are tested. Second, the comparison reveals that accountability is not merely a constraint on effectiveness; it is a source of long-term institutional strength. Israel’s program has survived for five decades partly because its accountability mechanisms, however imperfect, have created domestic legitimacy, legal protection, and diplomatic resilience that sustain the program through individual operational failures. India’s program, lacking those mechanisms, is operationally flexible in the short term but institutionally fragile in the long term. Third, the comparison suggests that the spectrum between total denial and full transparency is not binary but continuous, and that each point on the spectrum involves specific trade-offs between operational security, democratic accountability, diplomatic risk, and institutional learning. Policymakers confronting similar challenges in other democracies can study the India-Israel divergence not as a choice between right and wrong but as a choice between different configurations of risk. The eight-dimension framework this article provides offers a structured methodology for that assessment, applicable beyond the India-Israel context to any democracy grappling with the tension between security necessity and democratic governance.