When Israel banned torture
A former Israel correspondent for The New York Times, Serge Schmemann, recalls Israel's own debate about torture -- and ultimate rejection of it by the Israeli Supreme Court -- and what sort of model that presents for the United States:
Reading about the Bush administration’s convoluted attempts to justify torture takes me back to reporting I did 12 years ago on the anguished debate in Israel over its secret service’s use of violence in interrogations. That was two years before the Israeli Supreme Court banned the practice. “This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it,” wrote the president of the court, Aharon Barak.
I had interviewed Justice Barak for my article, and I recall with some shame my righteous certainty in those days that I came from a country that would never stoop to such methods.
Full column here.
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Didn’t Irgun use suicide bombers ? I seem to remember an interview with Menachem Begin in which he mentioned Irgun members walking up to British checkposts with bombs.
Dear Mr. Goldbarg,
No. The Irgun did NOT use suicide bombers. The PLO and other Palestinians “deserve” all the credit for these sorts of bombings targeting civilians.
When the Irgun bombed any place, it did everything possible to minimize casualties, including first warning civilians (and others) to leave the area. This includes the bombing of the British headquarters in a wing of the King David Hotel (done in response to a British operation against the Jewish Agency, at the time when the Brits were refusing to let Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe into Israel). The Irgun called in 3 warnings prior to the bombing, which the British apparently chose to ignore. Please read Menachem Begin’s book, The Revolt, for a full account of the history and the respect for human life which was a hallmark of the Irgun’s operational planning.
The arab world has been murdering Israelis and Jews for centuries. It didn’t just start with the invention of explosives or the advent of instruction on the internet. The two who started the fight came together as brothers and vowed they would not turn on each other, but the descendants of Ishmael still raise their children to hate and kill Jews.
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Matt
05/01/09 06:00 PM
No, Sallai. The PLO formed in 1965 and began its campaigns of terrorism right away. Suicide bombing goes back well before 12 years ago. And it’s all been all but stopped the past few years. Torture had nothing to do with it.
And re-instituting torture won’t stop the rockets, either. Try again.