Giving Voice to the Voiceless

Kathryn Rubino sits down with Amos Guiora, law professor at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law and director of the Bystander Initiative, to talk about his forthcoming book, Enablers: Normalizing the Unimaginable. The conversation traces his path from an IDF JAG Corps officer to a legal scholar building a case for criminalizing the people who knew about harm, had the power to stop it, and chose not to.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

An enabler is legally distinct from a perpetrator. Guiora defines the enabler as someone who knows of harm because of their position or authority, is able to prevent it, and instead protects the institution or the leader over the vulnerable person.

Bystander law has a gap. Legal systems have criminalized the bystander who witnesses harm and does nothing, but not the enabler who actively protects the person or institution causing it. Guiora's work is aimed at closing that gap.

Institutions rarely pay a real price. When a university settles for hundreds of millions of dollars, insurance covers it, not individuals. Guiora argues that until specific people face criminal accountability, mandatory-reporter training and bystander videos stay performative.

The pattern repeats across very different settings. From Larry Nassar at Michigan State to the Catholic Church to Jeffrey Epstein's circle to Israel's handling of the October 7th hostages, Guiora sees the same structure: a perpetrator who could only act because an ecosystem of enablers let him.

His new book names names. Drawing on off-the-record access to former senior Israeli officials, Guiora documents specific people in Netanyahu's inner circle and the political calculations behind their decisions not to push for a hostage deal.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Bystander Initiative - S.J. Quinney College of Law

Enablers: Normalizing the Unimaginable (forthcoming) - Amos Guiora

The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander and the Holocaust - Amos Guiora

Armies of Enablers - Amos Guiora