Time to torture?

Israel's attempt to limit torture to exceptional cases was further doomed by the failure of courts to uphold human rights and prosecute Shin Bet interrogators responsible for breaching the Landau Commission's guidelines. PCATI notes that over a period of seven years "not a single interrogator has been tried in criminal court, not even when detainees left interrogation wings with permanent physical or mental disabilities," nor when a Palestinian detainee, Abd Al-Samad Harizat, was tortured to death in 1995 (the guilty interrogator resumed interrogating after a short suspension).

According to PCATI, interrogators are still protected from external scrutiny and from the threat of criminal investigation today. (Complaints by detainees are collected by an agent who works for the Shin Bet, who naturally prefers the version of his colleagues. And, as Al-Ahmar's case has shown, the courts also prefer to close their eyes.)

"There is no doubt torture degrades society at large," says Stein. But he sees torture as only one element of the methods used by Israel to enforce the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and protect itself from Palestinian ire. That list includes military sieges that punish entire communities, racial profiling and extra-judicial killings. All of these, he believes, have destructive effects not just on the Palestinians but on the Israelis who carry them out. "There are so many immoral things. Torture is just the more obvious and difficult to accept. When a man on reserve duty has to stand at a checkpoint for 30 days and enforce the closure on Palestinians, he also comes home brutalized by the experience. Occupation affects Israeli society in many ways."

Indeed, Stein believes the High Court's change of heart in 1999 came about in part because judges, who defended torture in petition after petition, "couldn't stand it anymore." Torture enlists the doctors who determine beforehand whether someone is fit for interrogation or needs to be treated with some restraint because of, for example, asthma, and violates their professional oath when they send patients back to the interrogation/torture room after perfunctory checkups.

The corrosion of values doesn't stop at judges and doctors. Torture still seems indispensable to a wide majority of Israelis. "There was a public outcry after the High Court ruling -- people were scared," says Stein. Politicians of all stripes, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, have vowed to pass legislation that would make physical interrogation methods legal again. "In most countries people would be ashamed of using such methods. Here they are proud of it. There's huge support for these methods," said Yael Stein.

Although Israelis can easily imagine themselves victims of a terror attack -- they seem to happen every week, everywhere, in restaurants, discos and train stations -- torture is different. "Israelis don't feel concerned by torture because it is something that will never apply to them but always to others, to Palestinians," says Widmer. "It's easier to torture people of a different race," notes Friedman. The most recent PCATI report on torture is full of religious curses and religious slurs used by interrogators to dehumanize Palestinians.

For Palestinians, shackled to desks or shaken senseless during Israeli interrogations, the impact is obvious too. "You destroy a man's soul and body for his whole life. He cannot work, marry, sleep at night. He has hallucinations. Torture is also a political way to destroy a people," says Friedman. Not surprisingly, the interrogation methods used by Israel have found their ways into Palestinian jails. "Palestinian torturers were first in Israeli jails. They have work experience, so to speak. And now they use the same methods [against Palestinian collaborators]," says Friedman.

Finally, there is the question of torture's effectiveness. Assessing this is difficult, if not impossible, for two obvious reasons: First, Israel still practices torture, despite officially outlawing it, and second, there is no way to know after the fact whether torturing a suspect would or would not have prevented a terrorist attack. But surely the burden of proof should be on the advocates of torture: If they cannot show that the practice's results justify its use, it should be rejected.

It would be difficult for an advocate of torture to argue that the payoff is worth the cost. The routine torture sanctioned by the Landau Commission did not stop bombs from going off in the past. And today, when "moderate physical pressure" is in theory outlawed, the security services boast impressive successes. Although bombs have killed scores of Israelis since the beginning of the intifada, security forces have deactivated bombs in watermelons, bags and garages, intercepted terrorists strapped with explosives and foiled numerous plots by killing bomb-makers and terrorist leaders in targeted military operations.

Ganor is amazed by the success Israel's security forces have had without being allowed recourse to force: "As a counterterrorism expert, I'm surprised to see that the Shin Bet manages even without moderate force. Detainees are very hard to interrogate," he says. "They are trained not to give away secrets and to resist Israeli methods. When one is released, he goes back to his group and briefs others. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have put out books and leaflets teaching people how to withstand interrogation -- even telling them which methods are allowed and not allowed so they can send their lawyers to court."

Sharon spokesman Gissin admits there is pressure to revert to the good old days when the usage of physical force during interrogations was less restrained. "Of course some people would like to give the security services more of a free hand. But despite the limitations, there's an impresssive rate of success so there's no need to use torture as such and we don't use torture as such."

"In some cases, in a very tense situation like we have now with daily terror alerts, restrictions create problems and a certain burden on the security services," said Gissin. "But despite that, within these limitations, the number of terror attacks foiled, stopped, scuttled, is far greater than the number of attacks that succeeded. I can't tell you if a suicide bomber succeeded because not enough pressure was used during someone's interrogation. But despite the guidelines, we have a very effective GSS and it's doing a tremendous job in terms of locating terrorists and preventing attacks."

Part of the reason for the agency's success is that it can rely on an excellent network of collaborators to collect information -- a luxury the United States may not have in its own war against terrorism. Israel, a much more powerful and wealthy country than its Palestinian opponents, has huge leverage to recruit collaborators by offering much-needed work permits, the right to be reunified with exiled family members, import licenses and money. (Collaborators tip off Israelis in their search for terrorists and help also to extract information inside jails by posing as friendly co-detainees.)

"A lot of experts feared that Israel's intelligence ability would suffer if moderate force was not allowed," says Ganor. "But at the end of the day, the Shin Bet manages to work without."

There is one last point to be considered: For every actual terrorist who spills the beans because of torture, who knows how many non-terrorists are pushed into deadly fanaticism by the experience of being tortured?

One of the Palestinian teenagers who were tortured at the Gush Etzion police station last winter made headlines in the Israeli press when he said, several months after he was released, that he now wanted to become a suicide bomber. He was arrested for throwing stones at settlers' cars, but he said the degradation and suffering caused by his interrogation made him consider terrorism.

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