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Are they still considered civilians when they work for a military program that threatens Israel existence? My grandfather was a scientist working for the army,

• bjourne 6y ago
  Yes, by the rules of war they are civilians. Let's assume that they were not and that the facility was a legitimate military target. Then it stands to reason that every Israeli person who helped stage this attack is also a legitimate military target. Every engineer who touched the malware code, every engineer who touched code for the tools to create the malware code, every project manager to any such engineer, every university professor who taught these engineers to create the malware code, every investor who profited from the military's procurement of the malware code the engineers wrote, etc. Add to the fact that the assassination of Iranian scientists is at least partially about deterrence - attempting to scare away nuclear scientists - and you have a strong argument in favor of treating Israel's cybersecurity industry as fair game for Iranian assassinations. It becomes very hard to draw a hard and fast line between civilian and combatant.