1. It was more ethical than he deserved.

2. It worked, didn't it?

1. I generally agree.

2. I'm not sure. It worked as a message: no one is untouchable. It worked to remove the man from the planet. But what about the long-term goals of finding a way to get Hamas (and all the other terrorist organizations) to stop suicide bombings and finding a way to end the conflict where Palestinians are no longer focused on driving all teh Jews into the ocean? I'm not so sure that this met longterm goals, although I'm not sure that it didn't. I'll re-visit the topic in my head in a few months.

But what about the long-term goals of finding a way to get Hamas (and all the other terrorist organizations) to stop suicide bombings and finding a way to end the conflict where Palestinians are no longer focused on driving all the Jews into the ocean?

Taking out one guy isn't going to do this, but if Israel is consistent and unflinching about continuing to do it, the popular support among Palestinians (which is already starting to dry up!) will eventually evaporate, and Hamas, et al, won't be able to operate freely even in the Pali territories.

The Arab mindset is that Allah protects the righteous, thus making them untouchable. Yassin could be a fluke, but what if the same thing quickly happens to Rantisi and Arafat and whoever's next?

1. He was urging, convincing, and persuading others to conduct terrorist attacks. If you only punish the actual perpetrators, you let him go on a technicality that he didn't actually do anything. That's what he was depending on. But by planning and urging and providing theological support to terror, he made himself a combatant, as I see it. So, yeah, it was ethical.
2. I hate to push it into black and white, either/or terms, but terrorism is specifically the attempt to use spectacular violence to intimidate a population into demanding a government change its policy. Thus, you really have a choice to eliminate that threat or try to avoid it some other way. "some other way" is pretty much appeasement; it means you've changed your policy to avoid the violence, and so you've given them a victory that will do nothing but perpetuate the violence.
So if you try to eliminate it, you can try to do so through law enforcement or military methods. The problem with law enforcement is that it is generally and "after the fact" process. Something has to happen to be able to convict and jail someone...at the very least, you have to have proof they were definitely going to plan something, and that can be problematic. You put yourself in the position of having to be lucky 1,000,000 times to prevent terrorism, but they only have to be lucky once.
So the only viable long-term response is to eliminate the terrorists with violent military methods. Kill them. Find a good, consistent way to identify who the enemy is, and shoot to kill or force them to surrendur, and then deal with them by military standards: "If someone was brandishing a gun, assume they are planning to use it and shoot them" rather than having a lawyer trying to convince a jury that a law enforcment officer should have ignored very clear threatening statements and actions because the poor innocent victim of police brutality was left-handed but holding the gun in his right hand.

But you do have to be careful, because the military method is invasive and not careful about human rights as guaranteed in our Constitution. That's why you see the US using the law enforcement method (for the most part) on our own territory, but the military method everywhere else.

Israel really is a combat zone these days.

It was the right thing to do, and the right way to do it. The lack of reprisals to date (despite all sorts of rhetoric) is an early indication it was correct.

...you can all tell me I'm brilliant now.

[crickets]