Torture, Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of
Israel
Edited by Neve Gordon and Ruchama Marton
London and New Jersey, in association with the Association of
Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights (PHR):
Zed Books, 1995. xv + 206 pp. No price stated.
In the summer of 1994, the Palestine-Israel Journal published a
document by the Human Rights Watch on the torture and ill-treatment
by Israelis of Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT). In ten pages of shocking reading, it described
in condensed form the patterns of torture applied to many thousands
of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Covering
similar material comprehensively and systematically, Torture makes
far more painful and harrowing reading.
Some books are said to be hard to put down, but the serious reader
will find it hard to continue reading this one: Torture is
deliberately unsparing in detailed evidence and documentation of
torture in what attorney Avigdor Feldman calls "a modem inquisition
state." The legitimization in 1987 of "moderate physical pressure"
by the Landau Commission con¬firmed what Feldman calls a
regime which "bureaucratizes the practice of torture in order to
hide and insinuate it in between legitimate government techniques."
Gaza psychiatrist Eyad Elsarraj notes that since the Occupation of
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, some 400,000 Palestinians have
been detained and imprisoned, and he believes that "a large
propor¬tion of the Palestinian population is suffering from
the direct effects of tor¬ture and the whole society is
indirectly affected."
Silence through Violence
Ruhama Marton, a psychiatrist who is founder and chair of
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), explains that while the declared
purpose of using tor¬ture is to force the enemy to reveal
secrets, in fact, "the torturer knows that the victim's words are
useless [and] to impose silence through violence is torture's real
purpose." In her introduction, she presents this book as a tool for
individuals or groups fighting against "organized violence, cruel
pun¬ishments, humiliations and the physical and mental abuse
of people wher¬ever they are carried on." With this purpose in
mind, no attempt is made to spare the reader even the most gruesome
details relating to the torturers and the tortured, the medical
ethics involved, and the social and legal responses to torture.
Relevant Israeli and international documents are also
provided.
The book, Torture, follows up an international conference on the
subject held in 1993 in Tel Aviv. However, instead of a
word-for-word transcrip¬tion of the proceedings, it was wisely
decided to present the major issues dealt with there in four
sections by medical, legal and academic experts. The aim is to
merge an academic approach with practical prescriptions for action.
This formula is generally highly successful. It both avoids
repetition and assures the provision of a remarkable amount of
authoritative infor¬mation and personal testimonies on varied
aspects of the subject.
Valid Hopes?
The editors note in their foreword that "we hope that this book
will help gener¬ate a public outcry against the practice of
torture in Israel and around the world." Inge Genefke of the Danish
Rehabilitation and Research Center for Torture Victims, writing of
government-sanctioned torture as a weapon against repressive
regimes, believes that "it might be possible to abolish
government¬sanctioned torture before the year 2000." Reading
the book, it is difficult to see how these hopes may be realized as
regards Israel.
The problem, as Hebrew University criminologist Stanley Cohen
expresses in one of the most trenchant and thought-provoking
chapters in the book, "The Social Response to Torture," is that
while there is nothing radical or extremist in a world organization
like Amnesty International, "in Israel, the identifiably liberal
sectors of the community play no active part in the campaign
against torture." The Israeli Bar Association is among the inactive
elements; he goes on to say that "the only serious opposition [to
torture] comes from more 'radical' and marginal groups" (like the
two which organized the 1993 conference).
The Israeli Reality
Unfortunately, this evaluation seems to be verified by the recent
decision of the Labor-Meretz government to continue with the
"shaking" policy which caused the death of Palestinian prisoner,
Abdel-Samed Herizat, under interrogation. Human rights activist
Mamdouh Al-Aker notes that today the PHR's efforts do not even
reach the majority of Israeli medical practitioners. While Cohen
rightly demands more pressure from the inter¬national
community, how effective can this be without a change in the
cli¬mate of public opinion in Israel itself?
There are grounds to fear that in the present Israeli reality (and
at the time of publication in 1995 it was noted that, since the
Oslo accords of September 1993, the position has not improved), the
struggle "on both sides of the bor¬der," in Marton's words,
may take much more than Inge Genefke's five years. Cohen rightly
compares the Israeli reaction to torture to what he calls the
clas¬sic response to allegations of atrocities committed
during the Vietnam War:
"They're all lying and anyway the bastards got what they
deserved."
Small Sentence, Big Lie
There are a few errors and irrelevancies in the text. For example,
Ruhama Marton, whose contributions to the book are among the most
interesting, refers in her introduction to the "Israeli-Zionist
society." Does she mean "Jewish" society in Israel, because the
overwhelming majority of Israelis vote for Zionist-oriented
parties? Is she using the word "Zionist" as a term of approbation
or (as I suspect) of repudiation? Or neither, in which case why use
it at all without defining it? However, these are minor
matters.
What stands out is the good choice of the material and the high
overall standard of the articles and of the documentation. Stanley
Cohen reminds us that Landau's "moderate physical pressure" was
termed "special pro¬cedures" by the French in Algeria. The
authorities have three variations in their reaction to torture:
"nothing is happening; what is happening is something else and what
is happening is completely justified." Torture proves that in this
small sentence there are three big lies.