"The New Counterterrorism: Contemporary Counterterrorism Trends in the USA and Israel" Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 35(1) 2012

In the first decade of the twenty-first century we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of counterterrorism in several democratic states. This new counterterrorism is ideological–religious in its rhetorical outlook, networked in its organizational structures, increasingly lethal in its operational tactics and more and more brutal in its methods. The shift to an ideological–religious discourse can be traced back to a conceptual transformation about the nature of terrorism, from the notion of terrorism as a “crime” to that as a “war”. The latter, differently from the former, requires ideological justification, which in states with strong religious constituencies, such as the USA and Israel, can partially be sought and acquired on a religious basis. Second, the new counterterrorism is based on normalization of extra-judicial means in the fight against terrorism. This has happened at three levels: by creation of overt and covert extra-jurisdictional domains—or legal black holes—outside of the human rights regimes of democratic states, by legitimization of torture at political, intellectual and popular cultural levels and by increasingly widespread use of extra-judicial killings of terrorist suspects. Third, the tactics used by new counterterrorism agencies are increasingly lethal and lead to disproportionately high number of casualties among innocent civilians. This development is to a large extent due to hardening of traditional counterterrorism targets and use of imprecise technology and intelligence in operations. Finally, the new counterterrorism is networked and often beyond the control of the judicial sovereignty of courts. This is largely due to informal contacts developed within the framework of the post 9/11 extraordinary rendition program and outsourcing and privatization of counterterrorism related activities and the ensuing contractual arrangements between state institutions and private enterprises.