( April 10, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A top Israeli scholar-analyst who served as advisor to several Prime Ministers has described Dr Dayan Jayatilleka’s book on Fidel Castro as a “fascinating book” that “deserves attention by all concerned with global norms” in a review posted in January 2013 on Amazon.com.
Yehezkel Dror, Emeritus Professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was Senior Policy Planning and Analysis Advisor with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, a consultant of the Israeli Cabinet Office and advised several Israeli Prime Ministers.
Professor Dror served on the Israeli government-appointed panel that investigated the military's performance in the 2006 Lebanon war. The Harvard educated academic is the author of ‘Israeli Statecraft: National Security Challenges and Responses’ (Routledge).
He has served as a senior staff member of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, directed the Strategic Studies Section of the Davies Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University and is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and of the Club of Rome.
In the review entitled ‘Realistic Ethics for Revolutionary Violence’, Prof Dror wrote:
“This is a fascinating book discussing the author's understanding of the "ethic of violence" of Fidel Castro. I am not qualified to express an opinion if and how far the book correctly describes the actual behaviour of Castro. But the book does present an impressive ethics of violence fitting bloody revolutionary situations, as developed and expressed, at least verbally, by one of the most interesting and relatively successful revolutionary leaders of the 20th century.
In essence, the suggested ethics justifies the use of violence, including extreme forms, if essential for making a revolution succeed, while restraining unessential violence not justified by evil acts which justify retribution. Thus, violence was not condoned against soldiers fighting on the battle field against Castro's troops, but was regarded as fully justified against those torturing revolutionaries, murdering them after they capitulated, and engaging in violent antirevolutionary actions after the victory of Castro.
Comparison such ethics of revolutionary violence with the barbarism of deliberate mass killing by Germany's National socialist regime, or Stalinist Soviet Russia, or mass killing terrorists, or African tribal ethnic killings, demonstrates the importance of developing a realistic ethics for revolutionaries - fitting, for instance, the Syrian revolution.
Trying to apply the norms of international humanitarian law to such situations is inappropriate and cannot work, while the absence of realistically applicable rules abandons the domain to normless behaviour. As revolutions are sure to characterize humanity for quite some time, because of transformative historic processes, there is much to learn from this, discussion of Castro's explicit normative thinking, however probably idealized.
Therefore this book deserves attention by all concerned with global norms, who should take into account the realities of revolutionary processes so as to limit violence to what is realistically necessary and morally justified in such extraordinary situations.”
Emeritus Prof Yehezkel Dror awards Dayan Jayatilleka’s book five out of five stars, the highest possible rating.
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