Gross, Emanuel 1948–

PERSONAL:

Born May 5, 1948, in Romania; immigrated to Israel, 1950; Israeli citizen; married.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail—egross@law.haifa.ac.il.

CAREER:

Writer, attorney, and educator. Haifa University, Haifa, Israel, professor of criminal law. Worked as a military lawyer in Israel.

WRITINGS:

Ed-ha-medinah ("The Crown Witness"), Ramot (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1988.

The Struggle of Democracy against Terrorism: Lessons from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Attorney and terrorism expert Emanuel Gross draws upon his experience as a lawyer with the Israeli military and as a professor of law at Israel's University of Haifa in his book The Struggle of Democracy against Terrorism: Lessons from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel. With this book, Gross ‘lays out his views on the proper response of liberal democracies to terrorism,’ noted a contributor to Reference & Research Book News. He presents a detailed survey of reactions to terrorism from America, England, and Israel, with a larger focus on Israeli experiences with terror. Gross makes it clear that the need to prevent and respond to terrorism is not a recent phenomenon. ‘Other countries that share our common-law heritage and adversarial criminal justice system have long faced terrorist threats,’ observed reviewer Aziz Huq in the New York Law Journal. ‘These other nations found ways to accommodate responses without collapsing into racism or barbarism. What can be learned today from those experiences?’ In his careful comparative study, Gross looks at how terrorism has been confronted via law, politics, government, and force in three of the world's more prominent countries. Lessons learned from one context may provide valuable guidance for prevention and response in other countries.

Much of Gross's work addresses the experience of terrorism in Israel since 1948, and how the country has taken perhaps the most severe legal steps to combat terror. Israel's geographic position in the Middle East and its frequent conflicts with Arab neighbors has often placed the country at odds with terrorists. ‘On the core tasks of description and analysis of Israeli laws against terrorism, there is much to admire and value’ in Gross's book, commented Clive Walker in the Law and Politics Book Review. ‘The book is an excellently accurate and rich source of materials, with especially valuable and cogent descriptions of key court decisions which were hitherto available only in Hebrew. Likewise, the trawl through relevant legislation and explanations of the separate codes for Israel and occupied territories is indispensable,’ Walker continued. Gross considers several important topics within the book, tying them closely to the three main geographical areas he addresses. Among the topics are interrogation of terrorist suspects, military powers in the fight against terrorism, the use of terrorists as bargaining sources, privacy rights versus the need for security, administrative detentions, using civilians as human shields, and the legally and morally questionable technique of preventing terrorism by selectively targeting and eliminating known terrorist threats. With his expert analysis and careful consideration of difficult issues, ‘Gross has fashioned a useful reference source,’ Huq concluded.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Law and Politics Book Review, May, 2007, Clive Walker, review of The Struggle of Democracy against Terrorism: Lessons from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, p. 387.

New York Law Journal, July 14, 2006, Aziz Huq, review of The Struggle of Democracy against Terrorism.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2006, review of The Struggle of Democracy against Terrorism.

ONLINE

University of Virginia Press Web site,http://www.upress.virginia.edu/ (October 28, 2007), biography of Emanuel Gross.