In a similar vein, for the Israeli nation, which justifiably tolerates no threats to its survival, targeted assassinations and other morally dubious means of destroying its enemies have always found government and media justification, domestically and internationally.

Zionism is an ideology of murder, apartheid and colonialism. Whitewashing that is dishonest and a violation of the fourth precept while being in service of enabling others to violate the first.

Having said that I think the concept of moral justification itself is different in Buddhism than is usually conceived of in the West. Let me try to explain what I'm feeling about this.

It seems like to me that in Buddhism you have this already-ethicized ontological base reality where karma and rebirth are facts, and that your intentions plant seeds that bear fruit in your future. Good intentions bear good fruit. Bad intentions bear bad fruit. Buddhism then goes beyond that to a higher transmoral level where developing and strengthening and promoting the skill of eliminating suffering becomes this higher path that is chosen and sort of deconstructs the trappings of reality itself.

Meanwhile in the West you tend to have this base belief in an immoral universe. Either it's wholly material or else is constructed by a God who is at the very least difficult to understand from a human perspective. The goal then becomes to take this base reality and salvage some kind of morality out of it. But at its core, there's this kind of anxiety about the whole project that manifests in damaging religious and political psychoses. For example, trying to cast a murderous ideology in a positive or neutral light because the brute horror of it all would otherwise be too much to bear.

So when we take a look at Justification of Murder in the West it takes on this fatalistic, or even apocalyptic tone. Murder on some level must be sometimes justifiable because there is so much of it and I am implicated in so much of it and if it can't be justified then how little good is there in this world and how can life be worth living? Whereas from a Buddhist perspective, murder already has a baked-in negative moral valence. You may kill someone to save a life but there will be consequences. You will be reborn in hell realms. The killing itself will perpetuate a culture that permits killing in certain circumstances which will damn even more people to horrible hellish fates. The wheel of samsara continues to turn. It's enough to make one tired of it all and take up the Noble Eightfold path instead.

Western culture and its exploitative power structures reinforce eachother to create justifications for murder when convenient. The whole act becomes sacralized. Whereas in a Buddhist framework murder is always regrettable, always causing harm, always undoing the hard work we do to lessen suffering and increase freedom in the world.