Torture in the Only Democracy in the Middle East
An interview with Dr. Stanley Cohen
by Yifat Suskind
In his gravelly, trademark monotone, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
appeared on the evening news one night in October 1994, and explained to the
Israeli public that the recent Hamas bus bombing in Tel Aviv demanded the
use of greater physical force in interrogations of political detainees.
Systematic torture of Palestinian prisoners is nothing new in Israel. But
Rabin's explicit public sanction signifies a curious aspect of torture in
Israel: violence against Palestinian detainees is openly acknowledged.
Compared to the brutal record of Israeli occupation, democratic traditions
within Jewish-Israeli society have remained relatively intact. Human rights
organizations, academics and the media are therefore able to document and
discuss torture with relative freedom. Indeed, anyone who reads an Israeli
newspaper has regular, descriptive information about the policy.
Yifat Susskind: How do Israelis reconcile their knowledge of torture with a
perception of their society as 'democratic and enlightened'?
Dr. Stanley Cohen: One can point to a four-stage process in Israel that
allowed people to neutralize the dissonance between this knowledge and their
national self-perception. The first - outright denial of torture - lasted
until 1987 when the Landau Commission Report was published
(1). Stages two and
three, which occurred simultaneously, are the reinterpretation (renaming)
and justification of torture. This is a complicated exercise, not needed by
authoritarian regimes where knowledge does not circulate freely and where
there is no democratic facade to preserve. But the Landau Commission had to
say, 'yes, we are using violence in interrogation, but this is not really
torture and anyway, it is justified'. The French in Algeria called torture
'special procedures'. The Landau Commission's famous phrase is 'moderate
physical pressure'. By presenting this euphemism one creates a different
cognitive framework for torture. This alternative category maintains the
assumption that torture only occurs in totalitarian societies; therefore,
whatever is happening here must be something other than torture. The
importance of this cognitive conversion cannot be underestimated. The fourth
stage is the institutionalization of torture, through, for example,
ministerial committees who regulate the application of pain and mistreatment
by periodically reviewing and adjusting the Landau guidelines.
Parallel to these stages is a whole body of rationalizations that one hears
in discussions of torture. For example, downgrading, or the idea that other
places are worse - which is certainly true; necessity, the idea that torture
is endemic to occupation and will only end through a political solution;
blaming the victim, reasoning that if a detainee is beaten, he must have
done something to warrant it.
Do these processes account for the gap between the wealth of information
circulating about torture and the relative lack of public outcry against it?
The vast bulk of the public will support anything deemed 'necessary' by the
security apparatus. This reaction hardly needs an explanation. What does
need explaining is the relative acquiescence of Israelis who see themselves
as liberals. Here we have to understand the compromised history and status
of being a 'liberal' in Israel. Most of the Israelis involved in the
struggle against torture are leftists and radicals. That is, they come not
from the Meretz-Peace Now constellation, but from political forces
(anti-Zionist or not) identified with wider struggles for social justice on
behalf of the Palestinians. In other countries torture is a classic liberal
issue. But here liberals were so entrenched in the process of state-building
and remain so close to the institutions of power, that they do not
effectively challenge the state. Their Zionism typically takes precedence
over universal values, which might otherwise include opposition to torture.
To what extent do democratic norms (such as Israelis' faith in the legal
establishment and open public debate) ultimately enable a policy of torture
to remain unchallenged?
The judiciary here indeed has a good public image: the High Court is seen as
independent and representing the rule of law. As long as the legal framework
is deemed legitimate, people feel reassured that descent, honorable folk are
handling the issue. One can support this claim by pointing out, for
instance, that the International Red Cross can visit prisoners or that the
ministerial committee is overseeing interrogation guidelines. In the
international arena, Israel plays the legal game with great finesse.
Organizations like Amnesty International receive more detailed replies from
Israel than any other government in the world. So in a curious way, Israel's
sensitivity to its image, both domestically and abroad, helps sustain the
body of rationalization for torture. As far as public debate is concerned,
that's a rather Machiavellian view, but yes, the very fact that debate is
permitted improves the democratic face of the state, which in turn, is used
to mitigate claims of torture.
So how can human rights activists and others who want to provoke the debate
avoid this trap?
The challenge is to find new ways of addressing the issue. One negative,
though perhaps unavoidable, effect of documenting torture is that the more
information you provide, the more mundane torture becomes. Overloading
people with information that they are not prepared to confront causes them
to neutralize the impact of such knowledge rather than find ways to protest
it. We must refocus the information on groups that have some collective
identity (students, women, youth, political parties) or professional
associations, such as doctors, psychologists, social workers or lawyers.
These groups are amenable to peer group pressure and shaming. Doctors are a
good example. There is no evidence, as there is elsewhere, that Israeli
doctors are actually involved in inflicting torture. They do, however,
examine detainees to see how much 'physical pressure' they can sustain;
patch people up and send them back into interrogation; and cover up about
injuries. These are clear violations of the World Medical Association's 1975
Tokyo Declaration. We should press international medical organizations to
ban Israeli doctors from their forums, as was done to white South African
doctors. The same with the legal profession.
The common strategy is to create a situation in which the consequences of
people denying what they know become greater than the consequences of
confronting this knowledge. These groups in Israel have yet to pay a price
for their collective silence; they know that neither the US nor Europe will
ever impose sanctions against Israel because of human rights violations.
How has the Oslo process impacted Israeli attitudes towards torture?
Very negatively, for two reasons. First, Oslo was a watershed because it
allowed Israeli liberals to abandon even a normative opposition to torture:
anything became justified in the name of forwarding the peace process. Once
the original emissaries of human rights in Israel, people like Meretz MKs
Yossi Sarid and Dedi Tzuker, joined Rabin's government, they began defending
not just torture, but all kinds of human rights abuses. It then became very
easy for their supporters to follow suit. Second, Palestinian attacks since
Oslo, which have left over 200 Israelis dead, made it quite easy for the
government to justify torture as self-defense (e.g., the 'ticking bomb'
argument, which justifies using force in an interrogation if this might
prevent the greater harm that would result from an attack).
How do you counter such an argument?
It's very difficult. We can only repeat the absolute prohibition against
torture, regardless of circumstance, and to remind people that Israel has
ratified this prohibition. The doctrine of necessity will always be invoked
to justify torture, 'ticking bomb' or not. But here the human rights
position is vulnerable because we are, in effect, saying to people that
torture is forbidden and the consequences to you are not our concern. The
'ticking bomb' example is hypothetical - although the last wave of Hamas
suicide bombings allowed the Shabak (General Security Services) to represent
this to the public as a permanent reality. Most people are tortured as part
of general information-gathering (not related to a specific, imminent
threat), or to exert a confession about something they've allegedly done
already, or just to intimidate and control the population at large.
In 1990, a group of Tel Aviv high school students drafted a constitution for
Israel and included the Landau Commission's recommendations on using
moderate physical pressure in interrogations. Is this symptomatic of what
some sociologists call a 'culture of torture' in Israel?
Certainly we have witnessed an ever-widening circle of complicity in
torture; through interrogators, police, lawyers, doctors, judges and so on.
We have also seen the normalization of torture in the society. After the
killing of Abed Harizat who was 'shaken' to death by interrogators last
year, I overheard people on the bus arguing about whether it's permissible
to shake someone by the shirt, which is perhaps allowed by the Landau
guidelines; or whether it is only forbidden to shake someone by their
shoulders. When you get to the stage where people are pontificating over
this on buses and in cafes, torture has clearly become normalized.
I would not, however, say that a cohesive 'culture of torture' exists in
Israel. Torture here is not directed at internal dissidents, as in
totalitarian societies, but against outsiders. The degree of racism and
dehumanization of those subjected to torture is such that they are placed
outside of 'our' moral universe. The cognitive split between Israel proper
and the occupied territories, between 'them' (the Palestinians) and 'us'
(Israeli Jews), means that the threat of torture is not woven into our
everyday culture. We can be pretty sure that we will not be the victims.
Note, though, the indignation (absolutely justified in itself) when the
Palestinian security services began torturing their fellow Palestinians.
A Tribute to Orwell
A bill entitled 'Prohibition on Torture', currently
pending in the Knesset, would make Israel the only country
in the world to legislate torture. While the bill
prescribes prison terms for any public servant convicted
of inflicting or authorizing torture, it defines torture
as 'severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,
except for pain or suffering inherent in interrogation
procedures or punishment according to the law' (emphasis
added). Human Rights organizations world-wide have
described the bill as an 'outrage' and a 'grave
international precedent'.
For more information contact the "Public Committee Against
Torture in Israel"(2).
Footnotes
- The Landau Commission, a government committee initially appointed to
investigate allegations of torture, drafted a set of classified
guidelines intended to regulate interrogation methods. By sanctioning
some forms of physical and mental suffering, the Landau 'restrictions',
violate the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which Israel signed in 1986, and
ratified in 1991.
- The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) was founded in
1990, to campaign against the use of torture as a means of
interrogation. The committee seeks to investigate and publicize reports
of torture and mobilize public opinion to press for its total
abolition.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
P.O.Box 8588
Jerusalem 91083
Israel
Web:
http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en
Dr. Stanley Cohen is a professor of sociology at the London School of
Economics and Professor of Criminology at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. He is a founding member of the Public Committee Against Torture
in Israel and the author of Denial and Acknowledgement: the Impact of
Information about Human Rights Violations, reviewed in this issue.
