[News] Torture: Read it in the Israeli press

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Torture: Read it in the Israeli press
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6768.shtml


Miko Peled, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007

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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