November 24, 2000
'Torture Them'
Do we want a Vice President who endorses
illegal detention and torture of Palestinians? Anthony Cordesman,
a national security type frequently deployed as a television
pundit, recently posted a paper on the website for the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies recommending that
Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority engage in just these practices
to repress the latest intifada. "Halt civil violence,"
Cordesman counsels, "even if it means using excessive force
by the standards of Western police forces." But this is
only a warm-up.
"Halt terrorist
and paramilitary action by Hamas and Islamic Jihad," Cordesman
continues, "even if this means interrogations, detentions,
and trials that are too rapid and lack due process." Still
not clear enough. "Effective counter-terrorism relies on
interrogation methods that border on psychological and/or physical
torture, arrests and detention that violate the normal rights
of privacy, [with] levels of violence in making arrests that
are unacceptable in civil cases, and measures that involve the
innocent (or at least the not probably directly guilty) in arrests
and penalties."
In other words,
protected only by the weasel phrase "border on," Cordesman
urges that Israel's security forces return to the torture techniques
that were finally abandoned under High Court order a year ago.
Joe Lieberman is one of the senators belonging to the CSIS Middle
East Task Force. Thus far, despite explicit requests for comment,
he has not disavowed Cordesman's prescriptions, which have been
condemned by Amnesty International USA. For two months now Israel
has laid barbarous siege to Palestinians throughout the occupied
territories.
The Israeli Army
is busily cordoning Palestinian areas behind trenches and barbed
wire, making Gaza and the West Bank one vast prison-or rather,
many separate prisons, all barred from communicating with one
another. The policy of "closure," initiated after the
Gulf War, continued unabated during the so-called Oslo peace
process, in violation of Israeli government obligations.
The strategy of
apartheid and imprisonment is now accelerating, accompanied by
bombardment of heavily populated areas, as well as incessant
attacks from settlers (all courtesy of the US government, as
always, with vast new military subventions rolling in after the
Al-Aksa intifada began).
Even the relatively
better-informed mainstream accounts fail to convey the brutality
of this policy. There are a number of excellent news outlets
for those who want unjaundiced reporting. The website for Middle
East Research and Information Project is trustworthy (http://www.merip.org),
as is the Electronic Intifada (http://electronicintifada.net/new.html).
For the latter, the intro essay by Nigel Parry gives a useful
overview of media coverage. Electronic Intifada also has links
to other sites, as does ZNet's Mideast Watch (http://www.zmag.org/meastwatch/meastwat.htm).
Particularly comprehensive is Birzeit University's site (http://www.birzeit.edu/links).
Footnote: Meanwhile,
the Hebrew language newspaper Haaretz features an interview with
a sniper in the Israeli Defense Forces in which he says, regarding
the targeting of Palestinian youths, "Twelve and up is allowed.
He's not a child any more, he's already after his bar mitzvah
period."
Interviewer: "Thirteen
is bar mitzvah age."
Sniper: "Twelve
and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us."
Interviewer: "So,
according to the IDF, it is twelve?"
Sniper: "According
to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don't know if this is
what the IDF says to the media."
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