It’s Time To Hold Israel, Israelis And American Zionists Financially 
Responsible For Terrorism

*SEATTLE — *How do you hold a nation legally responsible for acts of 
terrorism perpetrated either by its citizens or the state itself? One 
solution is the International Criminal Court, which exists for such matters.

However, the ICC largely avoids taking on cases outside of Africa. Critics 
accuse the ICC of operating with apolitical agenda 
<http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/africa-in-focus/posts/2013/10/17-africa-international-criminal-court-kimenyi>
 in 
terms of cases it accepts or rejects — sometimes based on financial support 
— and ignoring obvious war crimes 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/06/icc-israel-war-crimes_n_6113264.html>.
 
In the Mavi Marmara case linked above, the chief prosecutor rejected the 
case in 2014, only to be overruled by an appeals panel several months ago. 
The prosecutor is now appealing the appeal 
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/icc-prosecutor-says-she-wont-reopen-probe-into-flotilla-deaths/>
.

This sort of bureaucratic inertia has hobbled it from its inception.

Even if the ICC does eventually accept jurisdiction, given such resistance 
it appears unlikely there will be a serious attempt by the ICC to hold 
Israel accountable for these acts.

So far, Palestinian Authority attempts to get the court to accept 
jurisdiction over Israeli violations of international law have had little 
success. What other options or legal models may be available?

The aftermath of the May 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara, part of the first 
Freedom Flotilla, by the IDF commando force, Shayetet 13, offers an 
important precedent. The Turkish government sought justice for this 
massacre in which Israeli soldiers killed 10 Turks, including one 
Turkish-American. Since Turkey broke off diplomatic relations over the 
incident, resumption of ties have also become part of the negotiations to 
resolve the dispute. Last February, the Times of Israel reported that part 
of the agreement under discussion involvesIsrael paying $20-million 
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-offers-20m-to-turkish-flotilla-victims/> 
to 
the families of the victims.

Press reports this week speak of an imminent deal 
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/turkish-israeli-detente-contingent-on-gaza-ceasefire-official-says/>
 in 
which Israel and Turkey would resolve their differences, resume diplomatic 
relations and Israel would end the siege against Gaza. It’s not known what 
the final outcome will be regarding damages, but certainly Israel will be 
forced to acknowledge responsibility for the attack and pay compensation to 
the victims.

This offers an interesting model for pursuing future litigation to hold 
Israel financially responsible for acts of terror perpetrated by its 
citizens and its military against Palestinian civilians and citizens of 
other nations. Over the years, Israeli forces have severely injured or 
killed nationals 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/26/us-mideast-shooting-idUSKCN0ID1ZJ20141026>
 of 
a number <http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.629035> of 
countries 
<http://972mag.com/seeking-justice-for-tristan-anderson-who-watches-the-watchmen/75464/>
 in 
Palestine and elsewhere.

 
Shurat HaDin: ‘Bankrupting terror one case at a time’

One of the primary practitioners of “lawfare 
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/lawfare-palestine-israel-gaza-conflict-dunlap.html>”
 
among pro-Israel NGOs is an Israeli-American legal non-profit called Shurat 
HaDin <http://israellawcenter.org/> (SHD, also known as the “Israel Law 
Center”). According to The New York Times, the group, founded by 
non-attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, targets Arab financial institutions 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/middleeast/crusading-for-israel-in-a-way-some-say-is-misguided.html?_r=0>
 and 
even the assets of Arab and Muslim states, claiming they fund and/or 
support “Arab terrorism.” They use two provisions of U.S. law, the Alien 
Tort Statute and the Torture Victims Protection Act, in order to pursue 
their objectives.

In a WikiLeaks cable 
<http://cablegatesearch.wikileaks.org/cable.php?id=07TELAVIV2636> filed by 
a U.S. diplomat serving in the embassy in Tel Aviv, the group’s founder 
conceded that she founded SHD in close collaboration with Israeli 
intelligence, specifically the Mossad:

*“**Leitner said that in many of her cases she receives evidence from 
[Goverment of Israel (GOI)] officials, and added that in its early years 
ILC took direction from the GOI on which cases to pursue. ‘The National 
Security Council (NSC) legal office saw the use of civil courts as a way to 
do things that they are not authorized to do,’ claimed Leitner. Among her 
contacts, Leitner listed Udi Levy at the NSC and Uzi Beshaya at the Mossad, 
both key Embassy contacts on anti-terrorist finance cooperation.”*

Though Darshan-Leitner does not mention receiving government funding to 
enable her to pursue her initial targets, this appears a possibility as 
well. The founder of the group declined to reveal the sources of the 
group’s funding to The New York Times in 2014, citing the vague grounds of 
“security.”

Given that Israeli intelligence agents routinely testify in such cases and 
U.S. judges have even permitted such testimony in private 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11750153/ns/us_news-security/t/federal-hearing-angers-civil-liberties-advocates/>,
 
in violation of the respondent’s right to confront witnesses against it, 
SHD continues its close relationship with the security services. It isn’t 
an exaggeration to say that NGOs like SHD are handmaidens of the Israeli 
state. They pursue objectives that advance the interests of the state in 
areas in which the state decides it should not directly venture.

Though the numbers are unverifiable, Darshan-Leitner claimed in media 
interviews that SHD has recovered a billion dollars in assets on behalf of 
American terror victims and their survivors who were killed or injured in 
Palestinian terror attacks. SHD’s motto is “bankrupting terrorism, one case 
at a time.” She works with a network of 30 attorneys who file and pursue 
these cases in cooperation with her organization.

Last Friday, according to Al-Jazeera 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/arab-bank-settles-case-terrorism-funding-150815145707062.html>,
 
Arab Bank, the largest bank in the Middle East, agreed to an undisclosed 
settlement on behalf of 500-class action participants in a lawsuit that 
accused the institution of facilitating Palestinian terrorism. Provisions 
of the agreement were not disclosed, but given that the plaintiff’s 
attorney trumpeted it publicly, it’s safe to say Arab Bank will be parting 
with a significant amount.

The suit appears little more than a vehicle for the Israeli government and 
its interest in promoting an image of the Arab and Muslim world as a nest 
of terrorists. Its tactics exploit the law on behalf of national interests, 
while cloaked in the mantle of aiding victims of terror. But if the FBI and 
Justice Department could use the tax code to take down Al Capone, what’s 
wrong with doing something similar to address Israeli terrorism?

 
A model for holding Israel accountable for terror

Given the success of Darshan-Leitner’s project, one can pay her no higher 
compliment than turning the tables. Israeli terrorism, perpetrated by 
individuals, terror networks like the recently exposed group called “The 
Revolt 
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israels-jewish-terrorist-problem>,” 
and the state itself, have caused incalculably more harm to Arabs than 
Arabs have caused to Israelis.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found 
<http://www.lobelog.com/the-proportionality-of-a-33-to-1-casualty-ratio/> that, 
from 2000-2008, Israel killed four times more Palestinians than 
Palestinians killed Israelis. That ratio has widened since then. Though 
many of these deaths happened during armed conflict, a significant number 
were acts of terror, like an incident earlier this month in which Jewish 
extremists burned alive an 18 month-old Palestinian baby and his father 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/08/saad-dawabsheh-dies-father-palestinian-toddler-killed-west-bank-arson-attack-dies>
 in 
a West Bank arson attack that remains unsolved.

Israel invariably refuses to hold such terrorists accountable 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/31/israel-hawks-dodge-blame-two-bloody-attacks-impunity-internal-divisions>
 for 
their actions (with few exceptions, and only in cases involving notoriety 
and international exposure like the brutal kidnap-murder of Mohammed Abu 
Khdeir 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/trial-abu-khdeir-killers-sham-family-150701075625547.html>,
 
burned to death by radical Israeli Jews). When prosecutions do occur, 
Israel often pardons or commutes their sentences. 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-jewish-terrorist-became-victim/6026>
.

Holding Israeli terrorism legally accountable offers an opportunity to use 
the same U.S. laws to pursue similar targets among Israeli financial and 
state institutions. The goal would not be to bankrupt Israel or its banks, 
but rather to force Israeli corporate and government interests to 
understand that there is a steep price to pay.

There are hundreds of Israeli settlers who’ve killed and maimed thousands 
of Palestinian civilians. A 2011 report 
<https://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_settler_violence_factsheet_october_2011_english.pdf>
 from 
the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 
documented 121 incidents in which settlers caused Palestinian casualties in 
that year alone. These terrorists use guns and other weapons provided to 
them either by their settlements, the Israeli army, or other civilian 
authorities. Settlements and their security (likely including weapons used 
in some attacks on Palestinians) are directly funded by the Israeli 
government.

 
US nonprofits may aid Israeli terror

U.S.-based pro-settler non-profits also support acts of intimidation, land 
theft and violence against Palestinians. During his free-wheeling days as a 
Washington DC lobbyist, Jack Abramoff’s laundered $140,000 
<http://www.texasobserver.org/2016-senatorial-courtesy-will-john-mccain-let-republican-perps-walk/>
 from 
the Chippewa Tribe through his Capitol Athletic Fund to the Beitar Illit 
settlement, according to a 2005 story from The Texas Observer. The money 
purchased “sniper scopes, camouflage suits, night-vision binoculars, a 
thermal imager and shooting mats” for a “sniper school” run by a former-IDF 
officer.

The Orthodox Jewish settler who ran the school “talked of a fifth column of 
Jewish warriors that will someday issue its own ‘call to arms.’ He also 
regaled Abramoff with accounts of sniper positions his group set up to 
cover IDF soldiers as they worked, “neutralizing’ terrorists, and watching 
‘the dirty little rats’ on the Palestinian side of the fence,” wrote Louis 
Dubose in The Texas Observer.

In this case and others involving different U.S. charities 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-us-charities-break-tax-laws-fund-israeli-settlements/10342>
 supporting 
similar projects, settlers benefit from tax-deductible donations and other 
forms of official support in their acts of intimidation, threats and even 
terror against Palestinians.

For those few who are convicted of their crimes and imprisoned, there are 
Israeli NGOs like Lehava and Honenu which advocate for terror attacks 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/.premium-1.669785> and/or support the 
perpetrators <http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=1140923> and 
their families when they are behind bars. The Nana article linked above 
notes Honenu gave $60,000 directly to convicted Israeli Jewish terrorists 
and another $10,000 to their families. These NGOs receive government 
funding to support their general mission and their work with the families 
of terrorists. The Israeli state also implicitly endorses and subsidizes 
the mission through tax deductions on donations.

One of the important precedents SHD established is charging Palestinian 
organizations with culpability for terror through their funding of payments 
to the families of *shahids* 
<http://unitedwithisrael.org/us-court-finds-palestinian-authority-guilty-of-terrorism/>
 who 
carried out terror attacks. SHD targets Arab banks which offer financial 
services to individual terrorists and national bodies which provide them 
with financial support. Such behavior is mirrored precisely on the Israeli 
side. What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.

Further, Israel has sent its agents around the world to murder 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01c4qfs> (and in some cases kidnap 
<http://www.mintpressnews.com/palestinian-engineer-kidnapped-by-israeli-mossad-in-ukraine/208526/>)
 
individuals associated with Palestinian militant groups. Though Israel 
claimed that some of them are guilty of planning and carrying out terror 
attacks, many have either had no connection to terrorism or only very 
peripheral involvement. The Mossad assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabouh 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0319/Dubai-assassination-spotlights-top-cop-skills-in-a-modern-day-Casablanca>
 in 
Dubai. His crime was that he was a weapons procurement officer who arranged 
for the shipment of Iranian weapons to Hamas.

Since 2007, the Mossad has also assassinated 
<http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354553-israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-irans-nuclear-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news>
 five 
Iranian nuclear scientists. Though Israel has never accepted responsibility 
directly for these acts of state terror, its leaders expressed approval of 
them and even said that whoever did them should be applauded. Numerous 
foreign intelligence agencies and journalists confirmed the likelihood of 
Israeli responsibility.

NGOs and lawyers should force the Israeli government to prove or disprove 
this claim in a U.S. court. If the Israelis refuse to do so or attempt and 
fail to do so, they should be held to the same standards SHD is demanding 
of Arab banks and states in U.S. courts.

 
Arab Victims Face Far Higher Hurdles in U.S. Courts Than Israeli Victims

Though the theory behind this proposal is sound, executing it will be a 
different matter. Gadeir Abbas, a former staff lawyer for the Council for 
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told MintPress News that there are 
significant hurdles confronting those seeking to hold Israel accountable 
for acts of terror.

First, he noted that Israel is a state, which therefore enjoys sovereign 
immunity from various types of tort cases. Since Palestine statehood isn’t 
recognized by the U.S., its political organs, like the Palestinian 
Authority, have no such protection.

Abbas raised the example of Rachel Corrie 
<http://www.mintpressnews.com/mnar-muhawesh-the-rachel-corrie-legacy-a-struggle-for-justice-in-life-and-in-death/208577/>.
 
She was a young American volunteering on behalf of the International 
Solidarity Movement to defend Palestinian homes in Gaza that were being 
demolished by the IDF. An armored bulldozer manufactured by the U.S. 
Caterpillar Company and driven by an IDF soldier ran her over and killed 
her.

“When you have the U.S. government actually paying for the Caterpillar 
bulldozer which killed Rachel Corrie, it poses an almost insurmountable 
obstacle to suing Israel in a U.S. court,” Abbas said. “Add to that a 
built-in prejudice against Arab or Muslim victims who are often seen in the 
U.S. media as perpetrators, rather than victims of terror. Alternatively, 
American and Israeli Jews have not, until recently, been seen as 
perpetrators of terror. So it becomes easier for judges and juries to rule 
in their favor as victims.”

In the resulting lawsuit filed by her parents, a U.S. court ruled that 
since the tractor had been purchased under a U.S. government program (and paid 
for by the government 
<https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/corrie-et-al-v-caterpillar> 
itself), 
this indicated our country had approved the sale and use to which the IDF 
put the vehicle. It therefore dismissed the federal suit as a violation of 
the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive branch.

When the Corries followed suit by filing in an Israeli court, it heard the 
case but refused to find any culpability on the part of the IDF for 
Corrie’s killing. This, Abbas noted, is part of the high barriers faced by 
those seeking to hold Israel responsible for acts of terror and homicide 
against U.S. citizens.

The former CAIR attorney did indicate that lawsuits against individual 
Israeli officials rather than the government itself might be more 
successful. An even more promising strategy would be to identify non-state 
actors such as settlers or NGOs who might support their crimes. But it 
would be critical to be able to prove that any party sued, whether an NGO 
or a bank, knew in advance that the activities it supported were illegal 
(which could include violations of international law).

Despite these caveats, Abbas considers this a promising avenue worth 
pursuing, especially if victims and survivors come forward wishing to do so.

Another lawyer with considerable experience in the field of corporate 
litigation told me that no major American law firms would touch such a 
case. First, it would poison relations with many Jewish clients or even 
corporate clients with a large Jewish customer base. Second, no matter how 
vigorous the defense mounted by the Palestinian Authority, the Arab Bank or 
the government of Iran, Israeli banks and government bodies would mount an 
even more ferocious defense, hiring the most prominent, aggressive legal 
team to represent them. Any legal nonprofit taking up this project would 
face extensive criticism from the Israel lobby.

Despite these complications, Israeli targets present a deep-pocketed 
opportunity for a willing lawyer. The Israeli government registry for 
nonprofits notes Darshan-Leitner’s last recorded salary in 2012 was 
$110,000, quite a tidy sum in the Israeli nonprofit world. Her cottage 
industry has flourished and her associated attorneys have earned major fees 
for their work.

To avoid the stain of personal benefit, those working on this project on 
behalf of Arab victims should eschew profit to the greatest extent 
possible. Expenses and reasonable fees should be covered. Any assets seized 
or settlement funds should be distributed to victims and NGOs working on 
their behalf.

NGOs and law firms must hold individual Israelis, financial institutions 
and the state itself accountable for anti-Muslim terror. The major Israeli 
banks have American subsidiaries, which make them even more vulnerable.


 Print This Story 
<http://www.mintpressnews.com/its-time-to-hold-israel-israelis-and-american-zionists-financially-responsible-for-terrorism/208811/print/>

[image: Richard Silverstein]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Richard Silverstein 

Richard Silverstein is a MintPress analyst who has written the Tikun Olam 
blog since 2003, specializing in Israeli politics and US foreign affairs. 
He earned a BA from Columbia University, a BHL from the Jewish Theological 
Seminary, and MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Follow Richard on 
Twitter: @Richards1052 
<https://twitter.com/richards1052>

More articles by Richard Silverstein 
<http://www.mintpressnews.com/author/richard-silverstein/>

On Wednesday, November 11, 2015 at 1:02:00 PM UTC-6, Travis wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2015/04/22/why-groups-use-terrorism-a-reassessment-of-the-conventional-wisdom/
> Why Groups Use Terrorism: A Reassessment of the Conventional Wisdom
>
> *Guest post by Max Abrahms <http://nuweb.neu.edu/cssh/faculty/max-abrahms>*
>
> [image: Fleeing ISIS, Syrian Kurds walk into Turkey. By the European 
> Commission DG ECHO.] 
> <https://politicalviolenceataglance.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/15154683630_3dbbf7d033_o.jpg>
>
> *Fleeing ISIS, Syrian Kurds walk into Turkey. By the European Commission 
> DG ECHO 
> <https://www.flickr.com/photos/69583224@N05/15154683630/in/photostream/>.*
>
> Over the past decade, political scientists have learned a great deal about 
> terrorism. For a while, the conventional wisdom held that groups commit 
> terrorism because it’s strategically effective. For this reason, the 
> dominant paradigm is sometimes referred to as the Strategic Model of 
> Terrorism 
> <http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec.2008.32.4.78#.VSaSVFxFz7d>.
>  
> Its logic seemed self-evident: To avert additional pain to their civilians, 
> governments were presumed to adopt a more dovish stance by granting the 
> perpetrators their political demands. *Prominent scholars from Robert 
> Pape <http://tinyurl.com/ltw4tfc> to David Lake 
> <http://tinyurl.com/jwqmbze> to Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter 
> <http://tinyurl.com/mf26ewj> promoted this viewpoint until it became the 
> conventional wisdom.*
>
> *There was only one problem with this emerging scholarly orthodoxy. It 
> wasn’t supported by the evidence. *Increasingly, empirical evidence has 
> revealed that terrorism is a remarkably ineffective tactic for groups to 
> induce government concessions. In 2006, I published 
> <http://tinyurl.com/ptpvobt> the first study to examine a sample of 
> terrorist groups in terms of their political effectiveness. What I found is 
> that groups are far more likely to attain their demands when their violence 
> is directed not against civilian targets, but military ones. Since then, 
> other <http://tinyurl.com/ko27esf> researchers 
> <http://tinyurl.com/otn9nu4> with different samples have confirmed that 
> hardly any of the thousands of terrorist groups since the dawn of modern 
> terrorism around 1970 have achieved their political demands by attacking 
> civilians. The historical record is not entirely barren of such cases 
> <http://www.amazon.com/Anonymous-Soldiers-Struggle-Israel-1917-1947/dp/0307594718>,
>  
> but they are the exception that proves the rule.
>
> Subsequent 
> <https://www.academia.edu/1595455/_The_Political_Effectiveness_of_Terrorism_Revisited_Comparative_Political_Studies_March_2012_>
>  statistical 
> studies 
> <https://www.academia.edu/7663390/Does_Terrorism_Pay_An_Empirical_Analysis_2014_>
>  
> have found that terrorism is not simply correlated with political failure; 
> the attacks on civilians actually lower the odds of government concessions. 
> This is because terrorism tends to shift electorates to the political 
> right 
> <http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2300112&fileId=S0003055408080246>,
>  
> strengthening hardliners <http://tinyurl.com/ppme8vh> most opposed to 
> appeasement. But don’t take my word for it; just look at how target 
> countries have responded to Islamic State and associated Islamist attacks.
>
>    - Last year, Islamic State said the purpose of beheading the American 
>    journalist James Foley was to persuade the United States into calling off 
>    military operations in Iraq. But the terrorist act had the opposite 
>    political effect. In the immediate aftermath of the beheading, President 
>    Obama declared that the U.S. would consequently ramp up its air campaign 
> in 
>    Iraq and extend it into Syria for the first time.
>    - The Paris attacks had a similar effect on France. The French were 
>    the opposite of intimidated. Instead, they were defiant. Attendance at the 
>    post-attack Paris march was essentially unprecedented. Crowds that size 
>    hadn’t been seen since the end of World War Two. Simultaneously, sales of 
>    the Charlie Hebdo magazine soared from about 60,000 to millions worldwide. 
>    The Islamophobic far-right Front National picked up numerous supporters. 
> Of 
>    course, France also dramatically increased its participation in the 
>    anti-ISIS military coalition, reflected best in its deployment of the 
>    Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the Gulf. And while Islamic State 
>    detests the Assad regime, the French public suddenly warmed to him.
>    - Canada, too, did the political opposite of what the Strategic Model 
>    would predict. After a couple terrorist attacks on Canadian soil, the 
>    public gave its spy agency unprecedented powers to disrupt terrorism at 
>    home, while suddenly favoring an expanded role in the coalition against 
>    Islamic State. Indeed, Canada is now arguably even more hawkishly 
>    anti-terrorism than its southern neighbor.
>    - Jordan was a real question mark. The Jordanian public had been 
>    highly ambivalent about fighting Islamic State before its citizen was 
>    torched to death in a cage. Would Jordan withdraw from the 
> counterterrorism 
>    coalition like the anomalous case of Spain 
>    
> <http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec.2007.32.1.185?journalCode=isec#.VSabK1xFz7d>
>  
>    after the 2004 Madrid attacks? Just the opposite — in response to the 
>    torching, Jordan began bombing the lights out of Islamic State, even 
>    ordering additional fighter planes to help get the job done.
>    - The beheading of 21 Coptics in Libya had the same counterproductive 
>    effect on Egypt. Although not formally a member of the anti-ISIS 
> coalition, 
>    Cairo quickly volunteered to lead a pan-Arab military force against 
> Islamic 
>    State.
>    - Even Japan became more bellicose after its citizens were 
>    slaughtered. Since 1947, Article 9 of the Constitution has banned Japan 
>    from possessing war-making capabilities. But thanks to the terrorist 
>    attacks, the Japanese rallied around the flag, pushing for the repeal of 
>    Article 9 to better respond to threats like Islamic State.
>
> All of this raises what I’ve coined as The Puzzle of Terrorism: If 
> attacking civilians only encourages governments to dig in their political 
> heels, why do groups do it? In a new study <http://tinyurl.com/nx9nfsq> 
> in *International Organization*, Phil Potter 
> <http://politics.virginia.edu/node/988> and I propose an original theory 
> that can accurately account for variation in militant group violence 
> against civilians. *It turns out that certain kinds of groups are 
> significantly more likely to attack civilians than others – those suffering 
> from leadership deficits in which lower level members are calling the 
> shots. Leadership deficits promote terrorism by empowering lower level 
> members of the organization, who have stronger incentives to harm 
> civilians.*
>
> For many reasons, there’s an inverse relationship between the position of 
> members within the organizational hierarchy and their incentives for 
> harming civilians. For starters, lower level members may try to rise up 
> within the group by committing atrocities against civilians. Such 
> organizational ladder-climbing is well documented in gangs, but is also 
> quite common in militant groups – just ask Jihadi John 
> <http://nypost.com/tag/jihadi-john/>. Furthermore, lower level members 
> have less access to organizational resources than the leadership, 
> incentivizing them to strike softer targets. And leaders tend to have more 
> experience in asymmetric conflict, so they are more apt than their 
> subordinates to understand the political risks of indiscriminate violence 
> in the first place.
>
> In accordance with this new theory for terrorism, our study reveals that 
> decapitation strikes with drones make militant groups more likely to attack 
> civilians by weakening the leadership. Decentralized groups are also prone 
> to civilian targeting because the leadership must delegate tactical 
> decision-making to lower level members. Similarly, we demonstrate that as 
> operatives travel further away from the leadership, they gain a measure of 
> autonomy and are thus more inclined to attack the population. Unlike the 
> Strategic Model, our organizational theory does not rest on the dubious 
> assumption that terrorism helps induce government concessions. But more 
> importantly, it can help to predict which groups will attack civilians, 
> when, and why.
>
> *Max Abrahms is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at 
> Northeastern University.*
>
>  
>
>  
>
>
> __._,_.___
> ------------------------------
> Posted by: "Beowulf" <[email protected] <javascript:>> 
> ------------------------------
>
>
> Visit Your Group 
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/grendelreport/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJmdTg0OGhoBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzE0NDcyNjY4MDg->
>  
>    
>    
> [image: Yahoo! Groups] 
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo;_ylc=X3oDMTJlNW5rN3JsBF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNnZnAEc3RpbWUDMTQ0NzI2NjgwOA-->
>  
> • Privacy <https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/groups/details.html> • 
> Unsubscribe <javascript:> • Terms of Use 
> <https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/> 
>
> __,_._,___
>
>
>

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