Systematic torture and international complicity

Systematic torture has surfaced once again as an integral part of the state of Israel’s colonial violence. A recent report by Israeli human rights organisations B’Tselem and HaMoked — “Backed by the System: Abuse and Torture at the Shikma Interrogation Facility” — has exposed the dynamics of collective punishment and complicity within the Israeli legal framework which is replete with loopholes safeguarding the perpetrators’ ability to act with impunity.

The exclusive focus on Shikma should be read as a detailed analysis of the official Israeli intention to violate Palestinian rights widely. Testimony provided by 116 Palestinian prisoners who were held at the prison between August 2013 and March 2014 detailed the rampant abuse, as well as interrogation under torture. The practices were deemed “prohibited” by an Israeli High Court of Justice ruling in 1999. However, as befits the colonial system, the institution made allowances for discrepancies which provided impunity for interrogators, thus ensuring some equilibrium between the state’s intentions and its complicit institutions.

The ruling specifically avoided classification of the Israeli Security Agency’s interrogation practices as torture. Interrogators were also sheltered from accountability “if it is subsequently found that they acted in the proper circumstances.” To all intents and purposes, the High Court ruling is devoid of any value for Palestinian prisoners and serves as yet another spurious endeavour characterising Israel’s belligerence.

Palestinian prisoners who participated in the research testified to having been beaten savagely; exposed to extreme temperatures; threatened by interrogators; subjected to humiliation through threats of home demolitions and the rape of female family members; shackled in stress positions; subjected to blackmail in return for economic benefits; and encouraged to consider treason as collaborators. In addition, 14 of the interviewed detainees reported having been tortured by the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence agents prior to being transferred to the Israeli authorities. While the dynamics of the PA’s collaboration with the Israelis are known, the report reveals these details as facts about it as part of the security coordination agreement; “security” in this instance is shorthand for Israel’s security, not that of the Palestinian people. In certain instances, Palestinian detainees said that they were told of the PA’s dissemination of information regarding their detention, thus rendering Israeli officials complicit in obtaining testimony under torture.

Israel’s ministry of justice exonerated both itself and Israeli interrogators with a statement published at the end of the report. Dismissing the research as “a description of only several isolated incidents” the ministry accused B’Tselem and HaMoked of denying relevant authorities “the possibility of a pertinent examination of the claims raised in the draft report.”

It is rather ironic that funding for the report was provided by the European Union, the same entity which prides itself upon symbolic gestures with regard to Palestine while exceeding expectations in ensuring that Israel remains unrivalled in its impunity and thus protected within the international community. Clearly, the content of the report does not reflect EU views, which maintain an abhorrent veneer of false sympathy for the victims of Israeli violence.

However, the cycle of dependency is evident. Forcefully stripped of dignity, it is reliant upon external aid that has rendered such dissemination of information regarding Palestinian rights more accessible.

As long as the international community remains committed to Israel’s existence at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians, the report will most likely suffer the fate of other well-researched documents; it will elicit a short-lived frenzy of activity before it sinks back into obscurity to become yet another specimen of awareness-raising. For Palestinians in Israeli jails, the cycle of torture applauded by both the PA and the international community will remain part of their inevitable daily reality in a grotesque and ongoing exploitation of their right to life and protection under international law.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.