 | | | |
Dear friends,
The State of Israel is currently unwilling and unable to end torture in its territory. That is the saddening conclusion that led us this week, with our partners, The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), to submit a detailed communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. In the communication, we asked to include the crime of torture as part the investigation the Prosecutor has been leading in recent years into the situation in the State of Palestine.
In the past two decades over 1,300 complaints of torture by Israeli security agents were submitted to Israel’s Justice Ministry. Out of all those complaints, only two criminal investigations were opened and not a single indictment was filed against those involved, even when the facts were clear beyond doubt and even when the system itself admitted to them.
In our communication to the court, we described among other things, the testimonies of
17 victims who were subjected to severe physical and psychological abuse by ISA agents - including holding them in painful stress positions that were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999.
“Torture is the most horrible event a human being can retain within himself,” wrote the author and torture survivor Jean Améry in his book “Beyond Guilt and Atonement.” Indeed, many of the victims reported that by the end of their interrogation sessions they were in so much pain they could not stand on their feet, and had given the ISA interrogators false confessions only to stop the torture used against them. They also reported the serious physical and emotional harms they continued to carry even years after the actions. Horrifyingly, such torture does not occur incidentally but rather is systematic, based on secret ISA guidelines approved by the highest levels.
It is important to state that eliminating torture is an Israeli interest too. In the democracy for which we are fighting, it is inconceivable for there to be organizations or people who are above the law. We must ask ourselves as a society, whether it makes sense for there to be people in our country whose profession is to torture people? Does it make sense for there to be procedures in our country that determine who and how much it is permitted to torture other people? Obviously, we live in a complicated security situation, which we can not and must not ignore. But we also insist that torture does not prevent terror, but increases hatred and fear. The fight against torture is also a fight for a safer and more moral Israeli society.
It is not too late for Israel to change course and prove that it is willing and able to eliminate torture by itself: Passing a law that explicitly prohibits torture, conducting professional and honest investigations, and prosecuting those who performed and approved the use of torture, are primarily our own interest, the citizens of Israel who want to live in a real democracy, where the government’s power over the individual is limited, and no one is above the law.
Read more about our communication to the ICC, in Nahum Barnea’s column in today’s weekend supplement of Yedioth Ahronoth (Hebrew Only):
| 
