Dr. Amos Guiora is an Israeli American legal scholar, professor, and former lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces. His research focuses on national security, counterterrorism, complicity, bystander responsibility, and criminal accountability. He has written influential books on enabling behavior, the Holocaust, institutional failure, and democratic governance. Guiora teaches at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he directs the Bystander Initiative.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Guiora about his new book, Enablers: Normalizing the Unimaginable. Their conversation examines the legal responsibility of political enablers, the erosion of Israel’s rule of law, the failures surrounding the October 7 attacks, the struggle to secure the hostages’ release, and Guiora’s argument that knowingly enabling harmful leaders should be treated not merely as a moral failure, but as a crime.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your new book was four years in the making and is being published by the American Bar Association. It examines Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s enablers and the grave harms you associate with them: the campaign to dismantle Israel’s rule of law and the failures surrounding the October 7, 2023, attacks, particularly the refusal to negotiate the immediate release of all the hostages. What is the book’s central argument?

Dr. Amos Guiora: The message, for me, is clear. The time has come to view the actions of an enabler not through a moral lens or a quote-unquote politically convenient lens, but through a legal lens.

As I argue in the book, and as I have argued in other works, enablers who know that harm is occurring and make the deliberate decision to protect the perpetrator accentuate existing harm and literally guarantee future harm.

This particular book was born, quote-unquote, in the immediate aftermath of my mother’s Shiva, four years ago in May, when I learned new things about her life in post-Holocaust Hungary. The initial thought had been to write a second edition of a previous book, The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust. That is how this project began.

It then became clear, particularly with respect to the Netanyahu government’s determined efforts to eviscerate the rule of law through what it called “judicial reform,” in air quotes, that, with all due respect to my mother’s post-Holocaust experiences, the shift would be so dramatic that it would require an entirely new book.

Then, in the aftermath of October 7th, 2023, which was nearly three years ago, and particularly, though not exclusively, because of the government’s refusal to make a deal to release all the hostages, it became very clear that I could use my mother’s post-Holocaust experience as a segue into contemporary life in Israel.

For me, the absolute necessity is to hold enablers accountable. Over the course of four years, I had access to the highest, underlined, the highest levels of former Israeli leadership across the board. All of it is anonymous at their request, and I have honoured that. It gave me, and I do not like the word “extraordinary,” extraordinary insight into the workings of Netanyahu’s inner circle.

More importantly, it gave me insight into particular politicians who are the ultimate enablers. I made the decision, in writing this book, to call particular people out. I named them for the public to understand which individuals committed the crime of enabling. This would require obviously waiving their parliamentary immunity.

I had remarkable access, for which I am forever deeply grateful to all those who took the time to meet with me, some of them more than once and some more than twice. That access gave me the opportunity to create this composite, if you will, of enablers at large and particular enablers.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu is the principal culprit. But his ability to achieve his objectives could only have been sustained over time because of those around him. I have no doubt that the people I name knew, and know, the harm they are causing. I also want to emphasize that I know some of them. I have known some professionally for years. For me, the conscious decision was to name names.

As far as I know, and from what I have been told while working on this book, more and more people are using the term “enablers.” The Hebrew term is me’afshérim. With all due respect to Netanyahu, without the enablers, none of this would have been possible. That is really the point of this book.

The book is very detailed, with flow charts, graphs, and so on. The point is to convince the reader that, to understand what happened, one must understand the significance of enablers and the consequences of enabling.

I have been asked, “If they are enablers, what crime are they enabling?” Much as there is a crime of child endangerment, in a perfect world, first of all, there would never be another October 7th. That being said, I would certainly advocate for creating the crime of hostage endangerment.

We knew that men and women held hostage were being tortured and subjected to sexual violence and other unimaginable crimes by Hamas and other armed groups. I need to add that there is no intention on my part, under any circumstances, to give Hamas a pass for what it did beginning on October 7th and throughout the period in which the hostages were held.

The remaining living hostages were ultimately released through the agreement brokered by President Donald Trump’s administration, and the remains of the final hostage were later returned. In my view, had Netanyahu had his way, the hostages would not have been released. We need to give President Trump significant credit here.

Because of the unparalleled emotional, physical, and sexual harm inflicted upon the hostages, I argue in the book that the Knesset (parliament) should have created a crime of hostage endangerment. The enablers enabled that harm.

With respect to the rule of law, Israel is a Jewish state, obviously, but it is also a democratic state. That is what elected officials swear to uphold when they enter the Knesset: democratic values, principles, and laws. The effort to eviscerate the rule of law primarily seeks to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court, which is, in many respects, the final institutional bastion of Israeli democracy.

The justice minister is so committed to this agenda that I do not focus on him as an enabler in the same way. Instead, I focus on those from whom I had expectations regarding their normative behaviour. They made a calculated decision. I cannot emphasize that strongly enough. It was a calculated decision primarily to protect Netanyahu.

I also assume electoral considerations played a role. Israel has party primaries, and these politicians must appear before their political base and convince voters they strongly supported Netanyahu and whatever measures he sought to advance.
For me, that is absolutely and totally unacceptable and unforgivable. That is the central theme of this book.

You also referred to the publisher, the American Bar Association. I have been asked whether this book is simply a case study or whether its analysis can be applied elsewhere. Although I focus on Netanyahu and his enablers in Israel, the framework is absolutely applicable to other countries and regimes in which a leader causes harm and is protected or assisted by people who enable that conduct.

I would not wish the hostage crisis upon anyone else, as it had undeniable and immediate emotional, sexual, and physical consequences for those held captive. The abuse of the hostages was not entirely hidden, and substantial evidence of their mistreatment became publicly available. Yet, the government repeatedly refused proposed hostage agreements. In my view, that conduct needs to be examined through the lens of criminal responsibility.

Jacobsen: How has Israeli law changed—or failed to change—in ways that permit continued impunity for Netanyahu and the politicians you identify as his enablers, even though the law does not formally recognize that term?

Guiora: Israel has a parliamentary system, and the governing coalition ordinarily controls the Knesset’s legislative agenda. Your question is therefore spot on. Since October 7th, no laws have been passed that would hold anyone accountable for what I would characterize as criminal conduct.

While working on the book, I had the opportunity to meet with a legislator from the opposition. We have elections scheduled for October 27th, 2026. With the fervent hope there will be a new government, we will see what legislation might be enacted afterward.

Immunity is obviously an issue with elected officials. As a matter of fact, there is a member of the Knesset who, in my view, should be prosecuted. She will not presently be prosecuted because the Knesset did not waive her immunity, which was unfortunate. The hope, obviously, is that this will happen after a new government comes into office following the election.

In the context of your question, those who enabled the refusal to make a hostage deal have not been held accountable. You can argue that the election on October 27th offers the public a way to hold them accountable. The answer is yes. If a new government is formed by parties that are currently in opposition, that would constitute a form of democratic accountability, which I respect and understand.

For me, however, that is not enough. The particular individuals whom I identify need to be held personally accountable. In a perfect world, there would be a law criminalizing enabling, just as I have advocated for the criminalization of enabling in testimony around the world. There is no reason why the same principle should not apply in Israel.

I emphasize this deliberately for the third time. We knew what was happening to the hostages and the horrific crimes to which they were being subjected by Hamas. For me, the refusal to make one deal that would release all the hostages was criminal.

There are those who will point to political decision-making, Netanyahu’s long-term considerations, or the argument that Israel should not give in to Hamas. I would argue, and I apologize for repeating myself, that the conduct was akin to child endangerment.

I also want to add that some interviews with former hostages, men and women alike, are available online and have been translated into English. In them, former hostages describe the unimaginable sexual, physical, and emotional abuse to which they were subjected.

When you stop and think about that for a moment, you ask yourself: How is it possible that an Israeli government did not do everything within its power to secure the immediate release of Israelis who were being subjected to horrific crimes by Hamas? To frame this solely as a matter of political calculation falls short, in my view.

I also need to add that describing me as active would be an understatement. I have been a very active participant in the demonstrations. Last summer, I had the great honour of being invited by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to speak at rallies in Jerusalem and Haifa, where I discussed enablers.

What was particularly interesting was the call and response between me and the audience, similar to what occurs in many African American churches between the pastor and the congregation. I would name particular enablers, and people would call back, “What about this person?” or “What about that person?” For me, that demonstrated an understanding that particular individuals had indeed enabled the conduct.

These were individuals who needed to be held accountable for enabling the harm inflicted upon the hostages. Again, I want to make this very clear: I have no intention of giving anyone from Hamas who was involved in these crimes a pass. But that is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is the Israeli politicians who enabled this conduct.

Jacobsen: Beyond Netanyahu, which political figures or institutions do you regard as his most consequential enablers, and how have they enabled his conduct?

Guiora: In my previous book, I wrote about sexual assaults and the armies of enablers surrounding them. I examined sexual-abuse scandals at Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, within the Catholic Church, and at USA Gymnastics.

The model of enabling I have developed, or the niche in the law I have been told I created, although that sounds pompous and I apologize, focuses on an ecosystem of enabling. That ecosystem is at the core of the problem. It gives the perpetrator the ability to act with impunity, knowing that he or she is protected by the surrounding network.

I am now writing a new book about enablers during the Holocaust, viewed through the experiences of my grandparents, who were murdered at Auschwitz. There, too, the argument is that enablers were essential to the perpetrators.

Here, with respect to the evisceration of the rule of law and the treatment of the hostages, the support Netanyahu receives from his coalition partners and fellow coalition members is essential. Israel has a parliamentary system, so Netanyahu’s ability to govern depends upon that support.

I also want to emphasize that identifying particular enablers can be somewhat complicated for a non-Israeli audience. There are Israeli politicians within the governing coalition of whom I had particular normative expectations. They are especially important to this discussion because, based on my knowledge of them, my observations of them, and my interactions with them, I would have expected them to act differently.

Instead, they made the narrow political calculation that they would need to face Likud voters in the party primary on August 4th, ahead of the October election. They clearly understood, had they voted against Netanyahu or pressured him to accept a hostage agreement, they would have paid a political price.

For me, that is as unconvincing an argument as one can make. It is an understatement to say human life is far more important than a political career.

During the Holocaust, a Hungarian Jewish leader named Rudolf Kastner helped organize what became known as the Kastner train, which allowed approximately 1,684 Jews to leave Hungary while he was negotiating with Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi officials.

Kastner later moved to Israel. In the 1950s, the Israeli government brought a libel case against Malchiel Gruenwald, who had accused Kastner of collaborating with the Nazis. District Court Judge Benjamin Halevi concluded that Kastner had, in his words, “sold his soul to the devil.”

I make a similar argument in the book. Israeli politicians who supported Netanyahu’s refusal to accept a comprehensive hostage agreement, in my view, sold their souls to the devil.

Kastner was assassinated in 1957, before Israel’s Supreme Court issued its decision largely overturning the district court’s findings against him.

It is a complicated story, but Kastner himself was murdered in Israel. For me, however, the phrase remains absolutely correct. That is exactly what enablers do: they sell their souls to the devil.

Last week, we saw two former male hostages on Israeli television discussing the unimaginable sexual and emotional violence to which they had been subjected. For me, anyone who enabled that harm needs to be held accountable through a court of law.

If this book advances that objective, whether here or anywhere else where enablers are essential to an ecosystem of enabling, then, from my perspective, that will be my modest contribution to this critical discussion about the ecosystem of enablement.

Jacobsen: Your research gave you access to former members of Netanyahu’s inner circle and other senior Israeli officials. What motivations did they ascribe to his enablers, and what emotions or revealing patterns emerged from those conversations?

Guiora: That is an excellent question. The people to whom I had access included former members of Netanyahu’s inner circle, people who served in his government, people who served in other governments, and people who held some of the highest-ranking positions in Israel.

In terms of emotions, while I was interviewing these people, I was also participating in demonstrations. It is interesting because I am sitting at the same chair and desk where I would work after returning from demonstrations late at night.

We would demonstrate on Saturday nights. I would come home, have a cup of coffee or a glass of water, and write the book. I am not a journalist like you. I am merely a modest law professor. But I was literally going to demonstrations, coming home to write, meeting with these people the following day or later that week, and then returning to the demonstrations the next Saturday night.

In terms of emotions, first and foremost, everyone was deeply concerned about the hostages. Israelis feared for their safety and believed that the government was refusing to make the necessary agreement.

Did that lead to anger? Absolutely. At the largest demonstrations, organizers estimated that hundreds of thousands of people participated across Israel. Relative to Israel’s population, that would be comparable to many millions of Americans demonstrating on the same night.

I also participated in the five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem organized by hostage families and their supporters. I walked for three or four of those days. There had previously been a five-day march against the judicial overhaul, and I had also participated in three or four days of the march.

You have been to Israel. It is hot in the summer. Hot, hot, hot. In Eilat, at least you can be near the beach. There is no beach along the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Thousands of people nevertheless participated.

There was absolute anger. There was also deep, deep concern for the hostages. During the hostage march, I briefly met the mother of one of the hostages. She had become a prominent public voice. I approached her and said, “As a parent, I do not know what to say to you.”

She replied very graciously, “The mere fact that you are here is enough.”

She was a parent who knew what might be happening to her son. At another rally, I stood next to a father whose daughter was one of the female soldiers killed on October 7th.

He, too, has been very public, and I found myself standing next to him. I am a parent. He is a parent. I remember thinking to myself, What can I possibly say to him? In the end, I decided the best thing I could do was simply stand beside him respectfully and let that be enough.

There was enormous sadness, anger, and overwhelming concern because the hostages were the issue every single day.

It is also important to add something that may not make sense to non-Israelis. There were Israeli politicians who belittled the hostages and their families.

I will share a story with you. It is in the book, word for word. You can decide how you want to present it to your audience.

I used to wear what you might call hostage-themed clothing, shirts with slogans such as “We Are All Hostages” or “Free the Hostages.”

One day I was in the parking garage in our small town. Parking is always difficult, so people often ask where you are parked so they can take your space once you leave. A man rolled down his window, and I assumed he was going to ask where my car was.

Instead, he pointed at my shirt. Everything that follows was said in Hebrew, and it appears in the book word for word.

He said, “Your mother is a whore. We will bury her.”

I said, “Okay.”

Then he said, “All the hostages must be killed.”

In my view, Netanyahu and his political messaging had turned public hostility against the hostages and their families. Rather than viewing them as people who needed to be rescued, some people came to view them as a political problem because their plight required the government to negotiate with Hamas, whether directly or indirectly through mediators such as Qatar and others.

At another rally, my wife and I were walking toward a demonstration in support of a hostage agreement in Tel Aviv. Nearby, there was a counter-demonstration opposing such an agreement.

One of the counter-protesters shouted, “Your mother’s a whore.”

I replied, “Well, your mother’s a whore.”

He then shouted, “Your place is in Gaza.”

That was the level of public discourse. In my view, it was facilitated, exacerbated, and enabled by those who protected Netanyahu’s refusal to reach a hostage agreement.

When I spoke at the Jerusalem rally, I referred to polling conducted around that time, in June or July of last year. I will send you the article. The poll found that approximately 82 percent of Israelis supported a hostage agreement. By any polling standard, that represents overwhelming public support. Yet it was not enough to persuade Netanyahu and his allies.

In my view, the agreement ultimately came only after sustained pressure from President Trump and his administration.

My wife and I attended the rally after the agreement had been announced and the remaining living hostages were expected to be released. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner both addressed the gathering.

When Netanyahu’s name was mentioned, the boos were so loud that you probably could have heard them in Canada.

When Steve Witkoff thanked President Trump, the cheers were equally overwhelming. Among many people in attendance, there was a clear belief that President Trump’s intervention had been decisive in securing the hostage agreement.

On at least one occasion, and perhaps twice, although I do not remember precisely, we marched to the U.S. Embassy Branch Office in Tel Aviv. We called upon President Trump to secure an agreement and to pressure Netanyahu to accept it.

We understood we had an Israeli prime minister who, in our view, was not going to make the necessary agreement. Truth be told, and I want to be very clear about this, I believe it was President Trump’s intervention that ultimately made the agreement possible.

That became our reality here. In my view, anyone who opposed an agreement enabled Netanyahu’s conduct.

Again, I apologize for repeating myself, but this cannot be viewed solely through the lens of morality. I am not a moral philosopher. I am a law professor. It needs to be examined through the lens of law.

We will see what happens after the election. That is the central theme of this book. It is very detailed and very specific, with graphs and charts showing how people enabled this conduct and why they need to be held accountable.

I have just emailed you the article about the Saturday night rally at which I spoke in Jerusalem. It also includes public-opinion polling from that period.

I want to add that the book initially began with the story of my mother and her mother. I ultimately moved away from that structure because the two themes did not work together in a single book.

Nevertheless, all roads, for me, run through my parents’ experiences during the Holocaust. Their experiences shape how I view the issue of enablers, both in this book and in the book I am currently writing.

During the earlier demonstrations against Netanyahu’s government and its proposed judicial overhaul, my mother lived near the demonstrators. She would make chocolate-chip cookies for me to bring to them. That was her modest contribution to the people standing outside in difficult conditions.

It is hot here in the summer, and it can be cold and unpleasant in the winter. My mother made chocolate-chip cookies. That was how she supported the demonstrators.

There is no doubt that my mother’s and father’s experiences shaped how I understand the issue of enabling.

For hundreds of thousands of us, our lives revolved around bringing the hostages home. Think about that for a moment. We believed we were fighting our own government because it did not want to make an agreement to bring the hostages home.

I apologize. They were not only Israeli hostages. Foreign nationals were also held hostage.

In our view, the government resisted an agreement. My hope is that history will judge those responsible as harshly as possible because, in my opinion, they deserve it.

Jacobsen: Amos, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Guiora: Thank you. I really appreciate it.