Torture:
Read It In The Israeli Press
By Miko Peled
06 April 2007
The
Electronic Intifada
Thanks
to the Israeli press, people in Israel are informed regularly about
their government's mistreatment of the 4.5 million Palestinians under
their rule. Most of the information regarding the occupation of Palestine
and the oppression of its people is well documented and accurately reported
in the Israeli press. But even the most serious offenses are given a
"kosher" stamp, so to speak, once the word "security"
is attached to them.
There are ample examples
of this, but few are as striking as the one provided in the March 23rd
issue of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. In this issue, there is
an interview with the retired Chief Interrogator of the Shabak, Israel's
internal secret security service, 79-year-old Arieh Hadar. Mr. Hadar
admits to acts taken by the Israeli internal secret security service
that have never before been revealed publicly.
Were Israel to be the democracy
it claims to be, this man would be put on trial, or at least beg for
amnesty in exchange for the damning testimony he provided. If Israel
had the least amount of respect for human and civil rights, this interview
would lead to an investigation and perhaps even arrests. But in the
Jewish democracy men and women of this kind are above the law, and beyond
incrimination. In Israel, the security apparatus is a sanctified system
that no one dares to question, it is a world of shadowy heroes to whom
Israelis are made to believe they owe their lives. Mr. Hadar is interviewed
as a hero who served his country instead of a villain that brought it
shame.
Most of the interview deals
with violations of civil rights of Israelis, violations that took place
in the early years of the state due mostly to the paranoia and McCarthyist
tendencies of Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Examples
of blacklisting civil servants and military personnel who did not tow
the line with Ben Gurion's party Mapai; opening voting ballots to ensure
that retribution followed dissent; and breaking and entering to dig
up information on people deemed by Ben Gurion and others in the party
as "enemies of the state."
But as the interview continues,
Mr. Hadar also touches on the issue of torture as part of the interrogation
process. He mentions cases of interrogations where his agents lied in
court about getting confessions through torture. "Since the suspects
were Arabs the judges would always take our word over theirs" he
says and continues to say that he found "Arabs were often glad
to be slapped a few times" because it gave them an excuse to turn
against their people and collaborate with the interrogators. He typically
refrains from using the "P" word and refers to Palestinians
only as Arabs or as terrorists.
This hero of the state who
obviously takes pride in his work continues: As the work load increased
around 1967 due to the increase of security threats involving "Arabs",
there was an increase in the use of physical force, which he says he
regrets but claims that they had no other choice then, nor does any
other choice exist today.
Mr. Hadar was not confessing
his crimes in the interview, but rather priding himself in his good
work. He describes an instance where a suspected terrorist was in the
hospital after being shot. "He had one tube in his vein and a one
going from his nose to his abdomen ... the doctor on duty understood
what we wanted, turned his back and said: 'you do your work and I will
do mine.' At that moment I began tugging at the tubes. The suspect understood
we meant business and immediately began to talk."
According to this report,
it is not only permissible to use torture even though it is illegal,
it is also acceptable for a doctor, who has taken the Hippocratic oath
(or is it an oath of hypocrisy) to turn a blind eye while these illegal
acts are taking place. Clearly such a confession given by a high-ranking
security official in Israel demonstrates one thing: that he knows he
will never be brought to justice for his crimes.
Indeed Hadar was summoned
in 1984 to appear before a commission that investigated the Shabak following
summary executions of Palestinians who kidnapped a bus in Israel. He
says he told the commission that: "applying physical pressure is
clearly illegal, but regrettably there is no other option. I explained
that these means, including hitting, sleep deprivation, mock executions,
and exposure to extreme weather conditions for many hours were the only
means at our disposal for getting to the truth ... I told the commission
that I do not feel good about it but someone had to do it." In
other words, it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.
Sadly, it seems that Israeli
society has accepted the role of partner in crime with people like Mr.
Hadar. What separates Israel from its neighbors is not democracy or
respect for human and civil rights: it is the discriminatory fashion
by which these rights are denied. The insistence that acts of torture
are illegal but inevitable and excusable in the context of Israeli security,
point to Palestinians as the only possible victims.
The author, Miko Peled is
an Israeli peace activist living in San Diego, California. His father
was the notable Israeli general, Matti Peled.
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