Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Americans are debating whether torture should be used against terrorists. But the case of Israel shows that brutality in the name of morality doesn't pay.
Nov 16, 2001 | It's a classic moral dilemma: Imagine security services know a bomb is about to blow up in a crowded public space, killing and maiming possibly hundreds of people. But the plot can only be foiled if information is violently extracted from a tight-lipped terrorist suspect. What should you do?
As Americans grapple with the possibility of ticking time-bomb scenarios in the wake of Sept. 11, the once unthinkable is being openly talked about: torture. In a column titled "Time to Think About Torture," liberal Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter mused whether torture would "jump-start the stalled investigation into the greatest crime in American history." Alan Dershowitz, normally known as a staunch civil libertarian, told Newsweek: "I'm not in favor of torture, but if you're going to have it, it should damn well have court approval."
On the unabashedly patriotic Fox News, where anchors sport American flag pins, anchor Shepard Smith introduced a segment by saying, "Should law enforcement be allowed to do anything, even terrible things, to make suspects spill the beans? Jon DuPre reports. You decide." Academic Jay Winick, writing in the Wall Street Journal, described how Philippine authorities tortured terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad into revealing a plan to crash U.S. jetliners and rhetorically wondered what would have happened if Murad been questioned by U.S. authorities, not Filipino ones. And conservative pundit Tucker Carlson opined on CNN's "Crossfire" that "Torture is bad. Keep in mind, some things are worse. And under certain circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils. Because some evils are pretty evil."
Amid these calls to begin debating a practice formerly condemned by all sides as barbaric -- not to mention the Bush administration's plan to try suspected terrorists in military courts, where they would have far fewer rights -- it is worth examining Israel's experience. The Jewish state has been using torture for decades against Palestinians. And its experience should serve as a powerful warning against the temptation to use brutal interrogation methods.
Officially there is no torture in the Holy Land. But on any given day, and on many more days now that the intifada has shattered Israelis' sense of security, there may be a dozen people screaming in Israeli interrogation centers and in Palestinian jails, as Israelis hunt for Palestinian terrorists and Palestinians hunt for collaborators with Israel. "In Israel, torture is seen as regrettable but necessary, so the courts and the public close their eyes. In the Palestinian territories, there is a witch-hunt against collaborators so no one speaks up," said Mireille Widmer, a Swiss human rights lawyer.
Until recently, torture was widespread, routine, legal and institutionalized in Israel. Although the state always denied that it resorted to torture, interrogation methods known as "moderate physical pressure" were deemed acceptable, legal and necessary in Israel's fight against Palestinians it deemed security threats. These methods included violent head-shaking; relentless sleep deprivation; shackling of detainees to poles, desks and slanting kindergarten chairs in excruciating positions; beatings; exposure to extreme temperatures, incessant harsh light and blaring music; and threats to family members.
"Moderate physical pressure" was seen by politicians and terrorist experts as the perfect answer to a tough quandary: how to protect the lives of Israeli citizens while remaining true to the Jewish state's self-image as the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East. According to Boaz Ganor, director of Israel's Counter-Terrorism Institute, it successfully "breached the contradiction between effectiveness and the threat to liberty and democratic values."
Human rights groups shattered that myth, contending that "moderate physical pressure" unequivocally met all definitions of torture under international law (including the Convention Against Torture which Israel ratified in 1991) and seriously undermined the moral foundations of Israeli democracy. They filed a petition against the abusive methods used by the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security force (also known as the General Security Services, or GSS) and partially won. In September 1999, a nine-judge panel of the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously outlawed torture (although the judges shied away from using the "T" word). The judges left the door open, however, for physical pressure in exceptional circumstances by giving interrogators the right to invoke the defense of necessity if criminal charges were brought against them.
Torture continued to be practiced even after the high court's ruling, but its frequency diminished dramatically. Then came the al-Aqsa intifada of Sept. 28, 2000. A year after the High Court verdict, the second Palestinian uprising started, pitting Palestinian stone-throwers, gunmen and terrorists against Israeli soldiers, settlers and interrogators in a bloody cat-and-mouse game in which about 900 people have died so far, four-fifths of them Palestinian. In this context, it was predictable that torture would come back in vogue, along with shatter-proof windshields, armored buses and guns, as a way of coping with danger.
According to a study published recently by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), one of the nongovernmental organizations that petitioned the High Court in 1999, the Shin Bet has reverted to many of its old habits. After reviewing affidavits from Palestinian detainees and other material collected by lawyers and human rights workers over the past year, the Public Committee concluded that although some of the torture methods outlawed by the court have almost entirely disappeared, "each month, dozens of Palestinians" interrogated by the Shin Bet are still "exposed, to one extent or another, to methods of torture and ill treatment."
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