Background
Droneable or not?
For years, Amos Guiora advised the Israeli army on pre-emptive actions to kill opponents posing a threat to the nation. Recently, he was awarded a doctorate in Leiden. "There wasn’t enough reason to kill Bin Laden."
Vincent Bongers
Wednesday 30 October 2013

On 22 March 2004, wheelchair-bound Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (67) was returning to his home in Gaza City after morning prayers. On the way, he was fatally wounded by missiles launched by an Israeli attack helicopter. When the smoke cleared and the warped remains of Yassin’s wheelchair could be seen, it became clear that his two bodyguards and several innocent bystanders had not survived the attack either. Global protests ensued.

And yet it was legitimate, claims Israeli-American Professor of Law and Terrorism expert Amos Guiora (1957). After serving in his native country Israel’s army for nineteen years and advising on

targeted killings, he now lectures at the University of Utah. Last week he was awarded his doctorate in Leiden for his dissertation on the toleration of extremism.Guiora is still intensely intrigued by the question of whether people who threaten the safety of a nation may be killed pre-emptively. "The actions against Sheikh Yassin and his successor Abdel-al Rantissi (who was killed in a similar fashion in April 2004,

ed.) were justified. It was clear they were preparing attacks and there was hard evidence for it. Our attacks met stringent criteria. Obviously, you want to limit collateral damage and cause as few innocent causalities as possible. No one likes killing people. It was very hard to give advice on such matters – that’s why I’m almost completely bald and my few remaining hairs are grey." Guiora is not forthcoming about which

targeted killings he was consulted: "I’m not going to say which ones I agreed to and which ones I didn’t. However, he is willing to reveal that Israel follows a careful procedure before anyone pulls the trigger. "There are three important questions you must answer before you take action: is the target easy to identify? Is it clear who he is and where he is? Is that person such a threat we can justify action or are there alternatives? And the final question: how big is the chance that innocent people will be hurt or killed and will it cause a lot of damage?"

Guiora objects strongly to the United States’ drone attacks. "Obama’s policy is not to have a policy and that’s just not right. America’s definition of a legitimate target is far too general. They don’t need any evidence of immediate danger to make someone ‘droneable’ and I can’t condone that."Accordingly, he also considers the elimination of Bin Laden to be questionable.

"The fact that he was responsible for 9/11 and other horrific attacks was not enough reason to kill him. It is important that there was hard evidence that he was planning new attacks and consequently had to be neutralised, but they didn’t have any evidence of that."

Though Guiora also discusses secular extremism his dissertation, he focuses more particularly on religious extremism. "I was also a judge in Gaza, where I had to deal with Palestinians who wanted to blow themselves up but hadn’t succeeded. I talked to them, asked what prompted their actions: Why do you do this? Why do you want threaten me and my children? And then they would say – without batting an eyelid – that it was the will of the imam and, more specifically, the will of God.

"They are not just mindless pawns; they are often highly educated people. I myself gave the order to arrest Abdel al-Rantisi in 1993 and I talked to him too. He had trained as a paediatrician, mark you. I asked how that tallied with leading an organisation that orders people to blow themselves up and kill innocent people. He replied that you had see things separately. They are two different worlds. That’s b

ullshit in my opinion. You can’t be a friendly paediatrician three days a week and leader of Hamas for the remainder – it’s a full-time job, 25/7." People have been blind to the dangers of religious extremism for too long, says Guiora, especially in his native country. "I witnessed what happened after the murder of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995. The radical rabbis who incited Yigal Amir to murder were never prosecuted. We cannot keep turning a blind eye to deeds of these inciters."

In his opinion, freedom of speech should be restricted to control radicals.

"I think we need to do it to protect a society. If an imam or some other cleric incites hatred and instigates violence, there should be a thorough inquiry. The police or another authority should talk to him or her and put a stop to it. If that person continues, we need to prosecute, which means limiting the freedom of speech. If we don’t, we’ll keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We can’t continue to tolerate intolerance."

We still don’t take religious literalists seriously, according to Guiora. "You often hear people say: ‘Oh, they don’t mean it, let them talk’. But it’s obvious that certain groups are deadly serious and the recent, horrific attacks on the shopping centre in Kenya and the College of Agriculture Nigeria have made that pretty clear."