This gun for hire.

That should be Israel’s motto when it comes to eliminating wanted Hezbollah terrorists the U.S. cannot or will not capture or kill.

This includes a pair of Hezbollah terrorists who were recently killed by Israeli air strikes in Beirut, Lebanon. The two were masterminds behind the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in 1983.

While wanted by the U.S. for 20 years, it took the Israelis less than 40 days to find the Hezbollah commanders and kill them.

While the Israelis did not specifically target the two for the U.S., they nevertheless did the U.S. a favor, even if President Joe Biden did not acknowledge it.

The two are Fuad Shukr, killed in a Beirut airstrike in late July 30, and Ibrahim Akil, killed in a second airstrike last week, both taken out on what was referred as “intelligence-based elimination.”

Israel blamed both terrorists for rocket attacks on the Golan Heights, one of which killed 12 Israeli children at a soccer match.

You do not want to get on the bad side of Israeli military intelligence, whether you are a terrorist planting a bomb, carrying a pager or talking on a cellphone.

The two jihadists killed in Beirut airstrikes were responsible for the worse single-day loss of Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima, or the first day of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Also killed in the 1983 bombing were 58 French soldiers.

Both groups were part of a peacekeeping mission during the Lebanese Civil War. They died without firing a shot.

They all were killed in their sleep when a suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad Organization, the forerunner of Hezbollah, drove a truck loaded with explosives into a Beirut hotel used as barracks.

The truck broke through a series of steel fences and barricades and exploded at the heart of the building which was located at the Beirut International Airport.

It was reported at the time that the goal of the Islamic terrorists was to force the U.S. and its allies out of Lebanon. If so, it succeeded.

Rather than retaliate — if he could find those responsible — President Ronald Reagan ordered all U.S. troops out of Lebanon.

So, from then until now the pair of top terrorists were free from capture or accountability, and one wonders if anyone from the U.S. was even looking for them. They were wanted for 40 years, which is even longer than it took to find Whitey Bulger.

And the pair had bounties on their heads to boot with the U.S willing to pay $7 million for information leading to the capture of Akil and another $5 million for Shukr.

Osama bin Laden, the organizer behind 9/11, was reported to have seen the lack of response by the U.S. as a sign of weakness, the same way terrorists look upon President Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

At least President Barack Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The loved ones of all those young Marines killed that day never got the satisfaction that the perpetrators of the mass killing were ever caught, punished or killed.

Until now. And they have the Israelis to thank for it — not their own country.

Rather than praise the Israelis for killing the two terrorist leaders in their offensive against Hezbollah, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a cease-fire.

A cease-fire will come after Israelis kill the last Hamas or Hezbollah terrorist.

The only White House official to surprisingly have anything positive to say about the killings was Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor who normally looks as though he is half asleep.

Sullivan called it the killings “a good outcome.”

“You know 1983 seems like a long time ago,” he said. “But for a lot of families and a lot of people, they’re still living with it every day.”

He should have added that when you need a tough job done, hire the Israelis.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@aol.com

A U.S. Marine sits on the bumper of a car that was destroyed when a huge bomb explosion wrecked the American Embassy in West Beirut, on April 19, 1983. (AP Photo/Bill Foley, File)