When Emily Thornberry claims that Israel is a democratic state then she is deliberately turning a blind eye to its routine use of torture
Not only does Israel routinely use
torture against Palestinian prisoners but it even uses
it against children, Palestinian children of course. 60% of Palestinian children who are
detained are tortured
by Israeli forces.
Yet in what Asa Winstanley called
‘a groveling
address in front of the Israeli ambassador at the Labour Friends
of Israel annual dinner’ in November 2017, Emily Thornberry declared that
‘even today... modern Israel
stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy, particularly in
respect of women and LGBT communities.’
Thornberry is seen by many in the Labour
Party as a ‘left’ replacement for Jeremy Corbyn if the Right can remove
him. She has, for example been endorsed
by Unite’s fake-left General Secretary Len McLuskey.
So a simple question. Is a state which routinely uses torture
against children and a section of its own inhabitants, Palestinians, who are
residents in a Greater Israel – albeit without any rights –fit to be called a ‘democratic’
state?
Is the use of torture as state policy
compatible with Thornberry’s description of Israel as a ‘beacon of freedom, equality and democracy.’? If she thinks it is compatible then this
alone should disqualify her from being an MP let alone a future Labour Foreign
Secretary.
Israel is the only state in the world
where torture is legal. There is a long history of Israel’s Supreme Court endorsing
torture. It originally ruled that ‘moderate
physical pressure’ could be used. It
then modified this by ruling that only in a ‘ticking time bomb’ case could ‘enhanced
interrogation techniques’ i.e. torture be used. This is the idea that if a bomb
is about to explode then it is permissible to torture someone into revealing
its whereabouts. However there is no example
of this ever happening. It is a pretext
for the routine use of torture against suspects.
A year ago the High Court ruled
in favour of the use of torture. This ruling was upheld
by Israel’s High Court two weeks ago.
As Israel’s Landau Commission stated
in 1987, when endorsing ‘moderate
physical pressure’
‘The methods of interrogation
which are employed in any given regime are a faithful mirror of the character
of the entire regime.’
The Landau Commission’s 1987 recommendations
were overturned
by the High Court in 1999 but the ‘ticking timebomb’ exception replaced it. Two
weeks ago the High Court approved (see below) the use of torture against a Palestinian
prisoner who knew where a weapons cache was being kept. This was not the ‘ticking
timebomb’ exception but an exercise in discovering where rifles used to attack
the occupying army were kept. This is
exactly what the Americans did in Iraq and Abu Ghraib and of course what the Nazis
did in Occupied Europe.
Perhaps Emily Thornberry can explain
whether she agrees with the Landau Commission’s observations that ‘'The methods of interrogation which are
employed in any given regime are a faithful mirror of the character of the
entire regime." If so how is this compatible with calling Israel a ‘beacon of freedom, equality and democracy’.
As Julian Borger noted in the
Guardian (11.2.2000) Israeli government
report admits systematic torture of Palestinians
The Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet,
used systematic torture against Palestinians and regularly lied about it,
according to an Israeli government report which has been released five years
after it was written.
Robin Cook at least tried, during his
tenure as Foreign Secretary to promote what he called an ‘ethical foreign
policy.’ That was why Blair removed him.
Thornberry makes so such claims. What is astounding is that so many Labour
Party members see Thornberry, a paid-up member of Labour Friends of Israel, as
being of the Left.
Tony Greenstein
Israeli
High Court Ruling May Make It Easier for Interrogators to Use Violence
A Palestinian West Bank resident says his
Shin Bet interrogators tortured him, but the judges say the methods were
acceptable. The ruling could have far-reaching implications for the way
interrogations are conducted
Yotam
Berger Nov 30, 2018 Ha’aretz
 |
| Fares Tbeish, who says the Shin Bet security service tortured him. Olivier Fitoussi |
In a ruling that could make it easier for investigators to use harsh
interrogation tactics against Palestinians, the
High Court of Justice said this week the severe tactics used against one
Palestinian were legitimate because he was suspected of knowing the location of
a weapons cache.
The court therefore rejected Fares Tbeish’s petition against the closure
of an investigation into Shin Bet
security service interrogators whom he accused of torturing
him.
Tbeish, a 40-year-old resident of the West Bank, was arrested in 2011 on
suspicion of membership in Hamas and arms dealing. He was kept in
administrative detention, or arrest without trial, for a year. Investigators
believed he knew the location of an arms cache containing at least 10 weapons,
including rifles.
After harsh tactics were used in his interrogation, he disclosed the
cache’s location. This information also led to the arrest of other Hamas
operatives, including one who confessed to having planned to kidnap an Israeli.
Tbeish and the state ultimately reached a plea bargain in which he admitted
to being a member of Hamas’ military wing, hiding weapons for the organization
and transferring seven weapons to other Hamas members. He was sentenced to
three years in prison.
After his conviction, Tbeish filed a complaint with the Shin Bet ombudsman,
aided by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. He said his
interrogators had threatened to harm him, his family and his home. They also
deprived him of sleep, hit him, kept him in the “banana position” – with his
back bent over a chair and his hands and feet cuffed together – shook him so
hard he lost consciousness, and kept him on a chair with his hands cuffed
painfully behind the chair back.
 |
| Simulated torture of a Jewish youth by right-wing demonstrators - when the Shin Bet uniquely used methods of torture against Zionist terrorists - its use against Palestinians has never disturbed these settlers |
The ombudsman, Col. (res.) Jana Mudzgurishvilly, investigated the
complaint, but in 2016 she closed the case. Tbeish then petitioned the High
Court with the help of the Public Committee Against Torture.
But justices Yosef Elron, Isaac Amit and David Mintz rejected the
petition, in a ruling that could have far-reaching implications for the way
Shin Bet interrogations are conducted.
Elron, writing for the court, said that even though harsh tactics were
used against Tbeish, he had failed to prove that they constituted torture. The
petition presented medical evidence that Tbeish suffered from toothache,
swelling, constricted movement in his knee, vision problems and leg pains. But
Elron said these were not enough to prove that he had been tortured.
'Special methods'
The Shin Bet acknowledged using “special methods” to interrogate him, but
it detailed these tactics in an ex parte hearing, without Tbeish or his lawyer
present.
“These methods didn’t include using
violence against the petitioner in the manner he described in the complaint and
the petition,” Elron
said. “Under the circumstances, and after
examining the classified material submitted to us, I was convinced that the use
of these special methods in the petitioner’s interrogation is covered by the necessity
exception.”
That was a reference to the High Court’s famous 1999 ruling barring the
Shin Bet from using torture, which included one exception – an investigator who
used violent tactics would not be criminally liable if these tactics were
necessary to save a life.
The metaphor the court used in that ruling was a ticking bomb. If the Shin Bet
captured a suspect who knew where a bomb was but refused to tell, investigators
would not be guilty of a crime if they used violence to get him to reveal its
location before it exploded.
 |
| Fares Tbeish, who says the Shin Bet security service tortured him. Olivier Fitoussi |
The 1999 ruling stressed that harsh tactics were permissible only if it
was important to obtain answers quickly. But Elron said necessity should be
interpreted “in light of Israel’s complex
security situation.”
“The petitioner is active in a
terrorist organization that had committed and continued to commit serious
terror attacks,” he
wrote. “In this context, the petitioner
was party to a plot to amass many dangerous weapons with the intent to use them
to perpetrate terrorist activity. The planned attack, had it been carried out,
could have claimed lives.”
Elron added: “This fear of a
tangible risk of serious harm to human lives ... created, in his interrogators’
view, a need to use special interrogation tactics to thwart the danger
immediately.”
In Amit's concurring opinion, he acknowledged that this case “isn’t the classic case of a ticking bomb
that could explode within minutes,” but he agreed with Elron that the need
to find the cache before it was used justified the harsh tactics.
'Letting the Knesset avoid responsibility'
Prof. Barak Medina, rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one
of the country’s leading experts on constitutional law and human rights, told Haaretz
that the ruling was liable to expand the security services’ ability to use
violence when interrogating suspected terrorists.
“It wasn’t a formal permit, but in
practice, yes. In any case where special methods are used, it’s necessary to
ensure that they don’t amount to torture,” Medina said.
“But there’s no open discussion about
the severity of these methods. The use of special methods is permitted only
when there’s prior knowledge – for instance, because the interrogee confessed –
that he has relevant information that he’s concealing.”
But Medina said the new ruling could be interpreted as allowing these
methods against anyone connected to a terrorist organization who is suspected
of possessing arms.
“There’s a significant expansion here
of the circumstances in which it’s permissible to use special methods, because
there’s no demand for high probability that these methods will indeed be
necessary to obtain this information,” he said.
Harsh tactics “aren’t a punishment
but a means to obtain information, so the issue of the interrogee’s direct
involvement in the expected attack isn’t necessary per se as a justification
for using these methods,” Medina added. “This
shows the very problematic nature of this whole doctrine because it means the
severity of the act attributed to the interrogee isn’t important in justifying
[tactics that] cause him great harm.”
Moreover, Medina said, the court is essentially letting the Knesset avoid
responsibility for regulating this issue in legislation. The 1999 ruling said
the use of harsh tactics in interrogations was an issue on which the Knesset
should decide – “not the attorney
general, not the Shin Bet director and not the interrogators. But this ruling
allows the Knesset to continue remaining silent and the Shin Bet to use
investigative powers that it doesn’t have officially.”
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel is also deeply concerned
about a remark by Mintz in his concurring opinion in which he referred to “the rule stating that torture is forbidden
except in extremely exceptional cases.” This phrase might suggest that even
harsher tactics than those used today could be legitimate in “extremely exceptional cases,” the
committee warned.
The court’s decision, said attorney Efrat Bergman-Sapir of the committee,
“is liable to be interpreted as a
significant retreat from the moral, ethical and legal stance laid down in the
foundational ruling on torture from 1999, which held that the ban on torture is
absolute, with no exceptions.”
No less worrying, she added, was the court’s expansion of the term
“ticking bomb” to include cases in which interrogators know “that there is no ticking bomb in the sense
of certainty and immediacy.”
Tbeish himself was upset that the court rejected his account of the
harshness of the tactics against him.
“I thought there was justice in your
court,” he said. “But in the end, what can I say? I raise my hands to heaven.
Justice, it seems to me, doesn’t exist in this life, only in heaven.”
Referring to the military judge to whom he showed the marks on his legs
and other parts of his body after his interrogation, he added, “Why didn’t the judge say back then that I
was lying? They hurt me.”
Finally, he denied the accusation – to which he confessed in the plea
deal – that he stored weapons for Hamas. He admitted that he has ties to the
organization but said the weapons were meant for his personal defense in
violent conflicts in his village.
+972 Magazine
By Edo
Konrad
Published December 2, 2018
Nearly 20 years after it banned torture, Israel’s High Court is
finding new ways to justify using physical force in the
interrogation of security suspects.
 |
| Israeli activists participate in an action protesting the use of torture, 2011. (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org) |
Israel’s High Court of Justice last week ruled that Israeli authorities’
torture of a Hamas suspect was not illegal and that the Shin Bet interrogators
do not need to be prosecuted. The ruling also broadened and effectively removed
the strict limitations imposed by a landmark decision by the same court nearly
two decades ago, which carved out a “ticking bomb” exception to the prohibition
on torture.
“The ruling shows that in the eyes of the High
Court, physical abuse is a legitimate and perhaps even the preferable way of
carrying out an interrogation in cases of national security,” said Itamar Mann, a law lecturer at Haifa University.
Shin Bet agents have for decades used torture, including moderate and
severe physical and psychological abuse, to extract information from
Palestinian suspects. The methods have ranged from violent shaking, beatings,
sleep deprivation, long exposure to loud music, exposure to the elements,
restraining suspects in painful positions for long periods, and covering
suspects’ heads in foul-smelling sacks.
Israel ratified the UN
Convention Against Torture in 1986, but never took the next step of
actually outlawing the practice in Israeli law.
In September 1999, however, the High Court unanimously banned the use of
physically abusive interrogation tactics. The ruling was widely viewed as a
bold prohibition on torture and has been lauded and taught around the world.
But in their historic decision, the justices also created a significant
loop-hole to the prohibition: in the case of a “ticking bomb,” interrogators
could avoid prosecution by invoking a necessity defense.
Twenty years later, it is clear just how much the Shin Bet has stretched
that loophole. “The ruling could be seen
an attempt to hide what the Shin Bet is actually doing,” added Mann.
Since 2001, when the Justice Ministry appointed a special investigator
of torture allegations against the Shin Bet, PCATI and other organizations
submitted over 1,100 complaints of torture. Of those, only
one resulted in a criminal investigation, and it was not directly related
to an interrogation.
The ruling also expanded the situations and circumstances in which the
Shin Bet can use torture.
“The decision allows for the
forced interrogation of any person who is tied to an armed wing of a terrorist
organization, who has information about an attack that could take place at any
given time, and is not willing to give up that information,” Mann said. “This is different
from a ticking bomb scenario, thus casting a wide net that covers nearly every
person who Israel deems an enemy combatant.”
The plaintiff in last week’s case, Fares Tbeish, a Hamas member, had
hoped the court would order the Justice Ministry to reverse its decision not to
open a criminal investigation into his interrogators, who he says tortured him.
Tbeish, who is being represented by PCATI and was first arrested and put
in administrative detention in 2011, says the tactics Shin Bet interrogators
used against him included beatings, violent shaking, humiliation, tying him to
a chair in painful positions, and repeatedly moving him from one interrogation
facility to another. He was later tried in court and sentenced to three years
in prison.
Tbeish allegedly admitted that he had received weapons from a
high-ranking Hamas member, which he then transferred over to a secret cache,
but it was never established whether Tbeish knew if those weapons would be used
in an imminent attack.
As a result of the interrogations, Tbeish said he had suffered bruising
to his leg and eye, as well as a broken tooth. Efrat Bergman-Sapir, who heads
the legal department at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and
argued the case, says that the use of torture was enough to merit opening a
criminal investigation against the defendant’s interrogators, and that the lack
of a ticking bomb scenario meant they should not be able to invoke a necessity
defense.
In addition to asking the court to prosecute the offending Shin Bet
interrogator, Tbeish and PCATI also wanted the court to close the loophole that
allows for the use of torture in the first place. The very existence of
internal Shin Bet guidelines — regarding the proper ways to extract information
from suspects as well as how and when to invoke a necessity defense — actually
lay the groundwork for using torture.
The convention on torture defines the practice as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,
is intentionally inflicted on a person.” In their ruling last week, the
justices concluded that the tactics employed against Tbeish did not meet that
definition, but were “proportionate and reasonable in relation to the danger that
arose from the intelligence.”
“The court’s decision may be
interpreted as a significant withdrawal from the moral and legal position
established in the landmark decision on torture in 1999,” Bergman-Sapir said in a written statement. “Equally troubling is the impossible threshold set by the court against
the complainant to prove that he was tortured in the interrogation room
and experienced severe pain and suffering.”
The High Court had the opportunity to restate that torture, or any
violation of international law, is unlawful, said attorney Bana Shoughry, who
headed PCATI’s legal department between 2008 and 2015 and was involved in
Tbeish’s case early on. Instead, it expanded the possible exemptions for Shin
Bet interrogators who break the law, not just from prosecution, but even from
an investigation. “The decision puts an
end to the idea that Shin Bet interrogators will be held accountable for their
actions.”
The Shin Bet has primarily used torture against Palestinians suspected
of involvement in armed resistance or terrorism. “These kinds of rulings make it easier for the Shin Bet to use these
practices against additional groups,” Mann concluded. “They have already been used against radical settlers, and will likely
continue to permeate other parts of the legal system, beyond what we can
imagine.”
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