Ted Lapkin is associate editor of The Review (http://www.aijac.org.au/main-pages/review_frontp.html), a monthly journal of opinion and analysis published by the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), a pro-Zionist body based in Melbourne, Australia. He “served in the Israeli army as a combat intelligence officer, seeing combat in Lebanon during the 1980s and rising to the rank of captain”.
This piece was written in response to Lapkin’s Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece of December 7, 2004 ‘When rules go out the window and near-torture is self-defence’, (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2846) arguing that al-Qaeda fights outside the Geneva conventions and is therefore not protected by them.
Let me begin with a possibly contentious statement.
Al-Qaeda serves only its original creator and master. Whatever the master wants it to be. There when the master needs it. Waiting conspicuously in the wings mid-election and/or invasion. For the moment, however, in the interest of articulating a response to Lapkin’s piece, I will suspend my disbelief and imagine it does exist as an organised, worldwide web of, as Lapkin describes it, “Islamic radical terrorists” or “Islamic zealots” or “terrorists with blood on their hands”. The word “terrorist” has been particularly favoured by Israel as the sugar to help the poison pill of countless “incidents” in the occupied territories going down the ever-swallowing oesophagus of her Western “democratic” patrons. Terrorists abounded in Lapkin’s own battlefield, Lebanon, during the years he served as combat intelligence officer and when the minimal dialogue coming out of the mainstream “Western democratic press” concerning the massacre at Sabra and Chatila was tellingly devoid of the word. To name but one obvious exception. As a former expert in the field, clearly he is well qualified to comment on combat intelligence methods.
So, from my perhaps flawed understanding, the basic tenets of Lapkin’s argument are:
1. The United Nations and Geneva conventions undermine the laws of war and give rights to murderers (in civilian garb); 2. Committing violations of human rights is the exclusive reserve of “enemy combatants”, not those who are “with us”, in which case the civilised rules of war are strictly adhered to, and; 3. Donald Rumsfeld’s word is truth (cue laugh). Glaringly dangerous is Lapkin’s negation of the presumption of innocence, and his view of the right to a public hearing as a luxury, not the right that it is, to be relegated to the bench while state security steals the limelight.
This would be setting a dangerous precedent were it not already forming the basis of lengthy detainments and heinous murders (in military garb) in the invaded and occupied lands Ted Lapkin refers to, and the lands of the occupiers and invaders themselves. Just recently, the Australian Government worked to suppress evidence in the persecution of alleged Sydney terrorist Faheem Khalid Lodhi. They will likely succeed. In another terrorism-era language amendment, the Government believes the evidence should receive “public interest immunity” and also immunity from the defence barrister and defendant himself. What may or may not be of relevance to Lapkin’s position is that of the 550 men and boys at Guantanamo Bay, 4 have been charged. Where is the evidence to justify what he chooses to describe (although what he sees, only he knows) as unpleasant measures? Unpleasant “solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions”. And clearly he wasn’t disturbed by the Abu Ghraib violations because, if I read his piece correctly, these would be categorised as “lesser categories of coercion” such as “use of forced positions”.
Entry: torture Part of Speech: verb Definition: hurt Synonyms: abuse, afflict, agonize, annoy, beat, bother, crucify, distress, disturb, excruciate, grill, harrow, impale, injure, irritate, lacerate, maim, mangle, martyr, martyrize, mistreat, mutilate, oppress, pain, persecute, rack, smite, torment, try, upset, whip, wound, wring, wrong Source: Roget’s New MillenniumT Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1) Copyright © 2004 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Are we in the throes of a great malevolence, with radical humanist groups disguising themselves as benevolent organisations running riot and seriously obstructing the pursuits of glorious armies? Human rights advocacy groups with political agendas, as Lapkin claims? Are they in league with the “terrorists” to do away with the fair, just world as we know it? And does Ted Lapkin live part-time in a parallel universe? There seems to be some confusion. In an earlier opinion piece published in “our” Rupert’s The Australian (August 25, 2004) Lapkin says, “War, by its inherent nature, violates the most sacred tenets of civil society. On the battlefield, savagery is rewarded and soldiers receive medals for acts that would earn them prison sentences in civilian life – killing their foes”. And make no mistake, according to Lapkin, we are in a war. A war that we did not start, but more about that later. Yet his more recent opinion is, “the laws of war essentially propose a contract to combatants: if you observe these rules of civilized warfare, then you will be treated in a civilized manner”. Civilised or uncivilised? That is the question. Smoke and mirrors.
In yet another Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece on October 6, 2004, more accurately describable as a charge against the Australian Greens’ Peace and Security platform, he enlightens them to the current state of international affairs as he sees it and they apparently do not:
“The fact is that Western democracies are under sustained terrorist assault from Islamic zealots. In the world according to Wahabi Islam, it’s the mujahideen way or the highway. Women are to be shorn of all rights and confined to the veil, while Christians and Jews are to be barely tolerated as second-class “dhimmi” citizens.
This is the only acceptable outcome to bin Laden and his followers. And it is an unacceptable outcome to any self-respecting democracy. Like it or not, this is a war. A war that we did not start, but that we must finish.”
I will abstain from reflecting on the etymology of the word “zealots”, or on the image of Muslim women “shorn” of their rights, being the sheep that they are. Or on how easily, with a few key word changes, this passage could be made to describe Bush & Co.’s quest. What jumps out at the reader here is that this reads suspiciously like a Crusades-era call to arms, with a very clear delineation between “us” and “them”. This is perhaps to be expected coming from the representative of a pro-Zionist body. Like Crusades-era propaganda, Lapkin’s piece thinly veils the racism and self-righteousness that lie at its heart.
Before I go on, I’d like to express my utter Shock and Awe at the notion of “near-torture [as] self-defence”. Has this come from the Wolfowitzian treatise on pre-emptive war? And can I buy it from Amazon?
Entry: near-torture Part of Speech: noun Definition: lesser act of coercion Synonyms: tantamount to torture, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions, lesser acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, mild discomfort, sleep deprivation Source: The compiled, unillustrated works of Ted Lapkin Copyright © 2004 by the Western democratic press. All rights reserved.
In his description of this war in which we reluctantly find ourselves as a war that we did not start, it is clear that Ted Lapkin’s war started on a tragic September day in 2001. Not so for the millions whose own tragic September 11s came before New York, in other beloved cities, onto the heads of other living, breathing kin.
To say that any form of torture is acceptable is to slide dangerously into violent anarchy. To censure organisations built on the “recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of the human family” for upholding the conventions signed by the key players (though yet to be ratified by all) in this “war” is tantamount to cutting off your own blood supply and signing your (very painful) death warrant. If the rules are bent, where do we draw the line? Who decides which measures are acceptable, or is that totally dependent on the identities of interrogator and interrogated? Ted Lapkin would be wise to be very selective when he categorises interrogation measures and determines their degree of severity. Otherwise, he may decline to reiterate this opinion were he to find himself geographically and temporally challenged, as was the case for many a Guantanamo prisoner, and in danger of being subjected to “lesser categories of coercion” as a suspected operative of some variety.
Lapkin describes captured alleged al-Qaeda fighters as having been “drawn from the ranks of an organization that sees the deliberate destruction of women, children and the elderly as a legitimate tactic”. Granted, but is al-Qaeda the only such organisation? I cannot but mention the name of 13-year-old Iman Al-Hams, which is all that remains of her aside from her bullet-riddled body. Or of the wedding party gone wrong in the Iraqi village of Makr al-Deeb. Not to mention the uncounted civilian dead sacrificed in the noble quest to bring that American brand of democracy to the world. This is but a drop in the ocean. Our democratic press bandies about such words as militants, terrorists, Islamists, insurgents, and masterminds to justify the deaths of these people on a daily basis. But who is there on the ground to verify this? And why are growing numbers of infants and children posthumously joining their ranks? The truth is that truth, like history, is the exclusive reserve of the powers-that-be, the victors.
Back at Guantanamo, surely the civilian garb allegedly worn in alleged combat by the men and boys detained in no-mans land was an oversight by the power that made them, and now deems them transgressors of Rumsfeld’s laws of war and qualifies them for “lesser categories of coercion”. Until they are proven guilty (again, 4 out of 550 have so far been charged), may they enjoy 8-hours sleep even if it means Ted Lapkin will lose some. Most importantly, if they are proved not guilty, may they receive justice, not just the rights they were robbed of. I will end by asking, simply, why? Are the frequent opinion pieces submitted by Lapkin purely opinion, or are they part of a concerted effort to undermine the international human rights and humanitarian laws brought about to protect all human beings, not just those of us who had the random luck of being born in a “Western democracy”, or were propelled here by the interests of those very same democracies having crashed squarely on our heads? What interest does Lapkin have in politicising the Red Cross? What interest in subverting the course of the UN’s investigating and reporting violations and breaches? In all of his selective bemoaning of the injustices committed by the United Nations and Red Cross to the honourable efforts of the military leviathans, his selective turning and prodding of legal terms, his selective endowing of “rights”, his selective valuing of human lives, Ted Lapkin in his capacity as mouthpiece for the Australian/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council must be prepared to have the spotlight shine brightly on Israel and her mighty military, whose frequent violations have been witnessed by the United Nations, Red Cross and all those other villainous organisations. Could the answer to my question lie here?
The Red Cross is clearly not the only organisation playing hardball politics.
Maha Ismail is a Sydney based writer.
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