Louis Frankenthaler
Women in Gaza City protest
the detention
of their loved ones in
Israeli prisons,
where torture is regularly practiced,
Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker recently expressed his
indignation over Canada's listing of Israel as a state that
engages in torture in a training manual for diplomats.
The ambassador asserts that torture is not practiced
by Israel and based on this it seems that the Canadian
Foreign Ministry will reevaluate this manual and "correct"
it. The problem, however, is not the manual but the fact
that Israel continues to regularly practice torture.
The ambassador claimed that allegations of torture,
such as those made by The Public Committee Against
Torture in Israel (PCATI), are questionable.
In November 2007 PCATI began to handle an especially
egregious case of the abusive use of handcuffing in
which the detainee upon remand complained of and
displayed evidence of having been tortured. The
military judge ordered that the detainee be examined.
Subsequent neurological examinations in an Israeli
hospital demonstrated that the detainee suffered
lasting injury to his hands. PCATI filed a major
complaint on this matter and asserts that it is
further evidence of the systematic nature of this
practice. This case was reported on by Gideon
Levy in Israel's Haaretz newspaper in which he
quoted the victim's affidavit:
("Twilight Zone: A window on interrogation,"
"Captain Adi sat behind me and began to
slap my face and ordered me to bend backward,
and when I got tired of holding myself in the
air he would push me backward and leave
me in this painful position for several minutes
and pick me up by the shirt and push me
backward. Captain Effie ... would place his
hand under the chair, grab my hands beneath
my back and pull toward him. Afterward Effie
took off my handcuffs, placed each of my hands
in a sock and bound my hands behind my back.
Afterward he brought different handcuffs,
tightened them on my forefingers, with my hands
bound behind me, and then another interrogator
joined and each of the interrogators began to
tighten the handcuffs on my hands with all
his strength, and one interrogator would hold
me by the neck at the same time and slap my face.
The interrogators used this torture for five to
ten minutes, during which I would scream with
pain and beg them to stop, while some of them
laughed at me"
Haaretz, 10 January 2008).
PCATI regularly documents and protests cases of
torture and inhuman treatment. We seek to compel the
state to stop using torture and at the very least, to
honor the 1999 Israeli high court precedent handed down
following a petition filed by PCATI and other organizations.
Many people, including, apparently, Israel's ambassador to
Canada, claim that following the judgment torture has been
abolished in Israel. This claim is mistaken.
The state continues to use torture. The judgment,
as important as it was, did not categorically outlaw
torture and ill treatment and one can argue that it
even facilitated its continued use by institutionalizing
the "ticking bomb/necessity defense" loophole.
Detainees continue to be illegally abused during arrest
and later in interrogation. They are regularly held
incommunicado, denied access to attorneys for extended
periods. They are too often injured and then examined
by physician, who may fail to properly document the
injury and its cause and subsequently return the victim
to an abusive interrogation.
Hundreds of complaints by torture victims have been
served since the court's judgment only to be
"investigated" by an active General Security
Service/Shin Bet security agent and systematically
dismissed by the State Attorney's office. One may
choose to believe that torture has been "abolished
in Israel" but it continues with impunity.
We seek to prevent torture where it exists and,
by doing so, protect the most basic principles of democracy,
human dignity and human rights. Torture is best prevented
by the actions of civil society organizations: litigation; public
education; holding torturers accountable; supporting
monitoring mechanisms; and demanding an end to impunity.
But as long as states, democratic or otherwise, continue to
torture and deny it the scourge will remain.
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