The brutal and humiliating treatment of Iraqi detainees by Americans bears striking similarities to interrogation techniques used by Israel‘s General Security Service (GSS, Shabak, or Shin Bet) on Palestinian prisoners. The current media attention on the former, healthy in its volume, is an opportunity to direct attention to the latter as well. One might be tempted to argue that great attention paid to American abuses and little or no attention paid to Israeli ones is an appropriate approach for the U.S. media, on the assumption that only the former is American guilt and the American media have a special duty to expose the guilt of their own nation or government. But abuses by Israel‘s GSS are part of American guilt, since the United States provides Israel with large financial support, three billion dollars annually in grants since 1985 (7; NB: references are chronologically ordered at the end).
In 1987, a retired judge for Israel‘s Supreme Court, Moshe Landau, wrote recommendations for the GSS allowing them to use torture in the interrogation of prisoners. The Landau Commission did not call these practices “torture.” Instead, euphemisms were used, such as “moderate physical pressure” and “non-violent psychological pressure” (5, 8). What constitutes “moderate physical pressure” and “non-violent psychological pressure”? The following account by a fifteen-year-old boy, arrested for throwing stones, is typical: “They handcuffed and beat me during the journey to Fara’a [a military prison in Nablus]. Once we arrived, they took me to a ‘doctor’ for a ‘checkup.’ I found out later that this ‘checkup’ is to locate any physical weakness to concentrate on during torture. They paid particular attention to my leg, which was once injured and was still sensitive. Before they began interrogation, they asked me if I was ready to confess. They then hanged me by my wrists, naked, outside in the cold, and gave me hot and cold showers alternatively. A hood covered in manure was put over my head” (quoted in 5).
The sack over the head is a common theme. Before being used on a prisoner, it is usually dirtied somehow, either with manure, as mentioned above, or with vomit (4) and is attached so that it is choking (4, 11). In addition to sleep deprivation (1, 2, 5, 8, 11) and violent shaking (1, 5, 8, 11), prisoners have been forced into the “shabeh” position in which they are bent over backwards over a chair with their hands and feet shackled underneath (4, 5, 6, 11). Unable to move, the prisoner can have loud music blasted into their ears for long periods of time (2, 6, 10, 11). Here is a first-hand account from Mousa Khoury, a Palestinian businessman, arrested and interrogated by Israeli forces six times: “My hands were cuffed behind my back and a potato sack was put over my head. My legs were cuffed to a tiny chair. The chair’s base was 10cm by 20cm. The back was 10cm by 10cm. It was hard wood. The front legs were shorter than the back ones, so you were forced to slide forward on it; only your hands were bound at the back. If you sat back, the back of the chair dug into the small of your back. If you slumped forward, you were forced to hang by your hands. It was painful. They would take you to the toilet only after screaming a request 100 times…. Your thoughts go back and forth and back and forth, and you can no longer have a normal stream of consciousness” (quoted in 8).
The Landau Commission decided that such forms of “pressure” were only to be used in “very specific and justifiable circumstances” (2), i.e., “ticking bomb” situations where prisoners were believed to have knowledge of imminent terror strikes (6, 10). According to Eitan Fellner of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, this has not usually been the case: “Torture became a bureaucratic routine in all Shin Bet interrogation centers. We estimate that 85 percent of Palestinian detainees were tortured, though many were later released without a charge” (quoted in 5).
In 1999, Israel‘s Supreme Court banned such uses of “pressure” under all circumstances (4, 10). But this has not stopped such “pressures” from being applied. B’Tselem documented torture of Palestinians under interrogation at the Gush Etzion police station from October 2000 through January 2001 (9). The victims were teenaged minors, in most cases taken from their homes in the middle of the night, and tortured until morning. The children were beaten severely for hours, sometimes with various objects, splashed with water outdoors in cold weather, had their heads forced into toilet bowls while flushing the toilet, subjected to death threats and other verbal abuse, and forced to stand in painful positions for long periods of time. The point was to extract confessions about other minors. To quote the B’Tselem web site, “Testimonies given to B’Tselem indicate that these are not isolated cases or uncommon conduct by certain police officers, and information received by B’Tselem raises the serious likelihood that torture during interrogations at the Gush Etzion police station continues” (9).
Jessica Montell, the executive director of B’Tselem, commenting on the continued use of torture while in custody remarks that “If I, as an interrogator, feel that the person in front of me has information that can prevent a catastrophe from happening, I imagine that I would do what I would have to do in order to prevent that catastrophe from happening. The state’s obligation is then to put me on trial, for breaking the law. Then I come and say, ‘These are the facts that I had at my disposal. This is what I believed at the time. This is what I thought necessary to do.’ I can evoke the defence of necessity, and then the court decides whether or not it’s reasonable that I broke the law in order to avert this catastrophe” (quoted in 8). An improvement perhaps but still inexcusable for anyone who recognizes human dignity.
Similarities between Israeli abuses and American abuses of Arabs have led al-Jazeera to speculate that the U.S. Army learned its techniques from Israel. Al-Jazeera quotes the Israeli-Arab Knesset member Talab al-Sanai as saying that “there are many Israeli experts on torture in Iraq who are transferring to the Americans their accumulative experience of thirty-seven years of torturing and mistreating Palestinians” (11).
This may be a question worth exploring, but it is not the ethically central issue, which is that if American actions deserve worldwide shaming, then so do Israeli actions, actions which, being supported with U.S. tax dollars, are also American actions in some sense or degree. One could point out that U.S. actions in Iraq are worse, since Israel does not, in Orwellian fashion, spout the words “freedom” and “democracy” while killing and torturing people. American actions in Iraq also have an element of sexual humiliation which may further distinguish them from GSS actions. These are points worth noting. But even so, the U.S.-supported Israeli actions are not so different in kind as to escape the need for public scrutiny. It is hard to imagine a better opportunity than the current media whirlwind surrounding incidents in Abu Ghraib prison.
References
1. Stephanie Nebehay, 23 March 1997, “U.N. investigator says Israel tortures Palestinian prisoners” Reuters.
2. 19 May 1998, “Israel torture condemned” BBC News: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/96535.stm.
3. 26 May 1999, “Israel ‘torture’ hearing opens” BBC News: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/353491.stm.
4. 6 September 1999, “Israel Supreme Court bans interrogation abuse of Palestinians” CNN: www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9909/06/israel.torture/.
5. Alexander Cockburn, 27 September 1999, “Israel‘s torture ban” The Nation.
6. 30 January 2002, “Israel‘s Shin Bet agency” BBC News: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1791564.stm.
7. Clyde R. Mark, 14 May 2003, CRS Issue Brief for Congress: Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance: fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/21117.pdf.
8. Mark Bowden, 19 October 2003, “The persuaders” The Guardian: observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1066041,00.html.
9. As viewed on 8 May 2004, “Torture” B’Tselem: www.btselem.org.
10. As viewed on 8 May 2004, “Torture by the GSS” B’Tselem: www.btselem.org.
11. 6 May 2004, “Israeli lessons for the U.S. in Iraq” al-Jazeera: english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C182D988-28E3-4D48-ADFC-F15D6509B0EC.htm.
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