NEWS & VIEWS

Torture and Citizenship in Israel

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Grotius – Center for International Law and Human Rights

News Update

29 December 2018

Torture and Citizenship in Israel

 

Today, Grotius – Center for International Law and Human Rights published a report about torture and citizenship in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories titled “Law’s Violence in Israel: Torture and Citizenship".

Torture is a heinous phenomenon commonly defined in international conventions and national laws as the intentional infliction of physical or mental pain to obtain confessions or other information from persons in custody. Torture is prohibited  during time of war or internal instability irrespective whether the person in custody is a citizen of the state or a national of the adversary.

 

Torture by Israeli officials has a long history and is practiced primarily by the Israel Security Agency (ISA- Shabak in Hebrew) and the police. This interrogation methodology applied against Palestinians from the 1967 occupied territories and Israeli citizens has been well documented in Israeli popular culture. The abusive interrogation techniques include rape, severe beatings, shaking, waiting in ‘shabah’ position, the ‘frog crouch’, excessively tight handcuffs, threats to life or family members, and sleep deprivation.

 

The 1987 Landau Commission of Inquiry which considered ISA’s interrogations in the occupied territories was the first Israeli official document that acknowledged the widespread phenomenon of torture carried out by the ISA and the organization’s systematic misrepresentations about it in court. The Commission also determined that the necessity defense in criminal law, broadly defined, is applicable to ISA interrogators who abused persons in custody. The Israeli authorities concluded from the Landau Commission’s findings that this defense provides the ISA with the power to use excessive measures during interrogation.

 

In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court held that four of ISA’s interrogation techniques were unlawful: shaking; waiting in ‘shabah’ position; the ‘frog crouch’; and sleep deprivation. The Court did not consider other interrogation methods and seemed to have obscurely noted that an abusive interrogation as such is unlawful. It also held that the necessity defense can only be advanced during a criminal trial or by the Attorney General when considering a possible indictment. Despite this ruling, ISA’s torture in all its forms persists as a phenomenon and some of its manifestations have been frequently chronicled by the Israeli press as well as local and international groups.

 

Israel is not the only country in the world that has systematically used torture against persons in custody. Many states have engaged in such interrogation methods either against their own nationals or applied them to adversaries. The Pinochet regime in Chile (1974 – 1990) is one example. The American - British wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have generated illegal interrogation methods carried out mainly by the CIA that constituted torture. In 2014 the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed more than 500 pages of its 6,700 study on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program between 2001 – 2009 concluding that:

"CIA personnel, aided by two outside contractors, decided to initiate a program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values."

 

American President Trump condoned torture as effective policy. The current CIA Director Gina Haspel was involved in the abusive interrogation techniques and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised the CIA’s brutal policy. According to a 2017 article in the New York Times “As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of a terrorism suspect and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting the brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand… President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And the new C.I.A. chief, Mike Pompeo, has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as “patriots” those who used such methods…” In her confirmation hearing for the position of CIA director on 9 May 2018 Haspel failed to answer Senator Kamala Harris’s question whether the CIA’s interrogation methods were immoral.

 

The British government posed serious barriers before British inquires that sought to discover whether British officials from the intelligence agencies and the military were involved in mistreating prisoners, were aware of such mistreatment by other countries, and if they had any knowledge of the rendition policy executed primarily by the United States Government. Nevertheless, the 2018 Parliamentarian British Intelligence and Security Committee and other inquires found that British authorities, including MI6, mistreated persons in custody, had been deeply aware of mistreatment of prisoners by other Governments, and regarding rendition with high probability of subsequent mistreatment:

"The Agencies also suggested, planned or agreed to rendition operations proposed by others in 28 cases. We have seen a further 22 cases where SIS or MI5 provided intelligence to enable a rendition operation to take place; and 23 cases where they failed to take action to prevent a rendition – this latter category includes instances where there were opportunities to intervene and prevent the rendition of a British national or resident, but the UK Government conspicuously failed to act."

 

Citizenship in Israel is defined in exclusive Jewish terms with deep and inherent religious elements, excluding primarily Arab citizens. Israel’s declaration of independence, its laws, and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence affirm this narrow conception of citizenship.

 

Israel’s Law of Return – 1950 and Citizenship Law – 1952 grant any Jewish person in the world the right to immigrate to Israel, gain citizenship immediately, and receive substantial financial benefits. In 1970 the Supreme Court rejected the request of an Israeli Jewish citizen to be registered in the Civil Registry as Israeli holding that “the appellant’s contention has no place – not even prima facie – that in Israel a separation had taken place from the Jewish people and a distinct Israeli nation has been created.” The Court reaffirmed this holding most recently in 2013. The Knesset’s 2018 Basic Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People which enjoys a constitutional status further shapes Israeli citizenship in an ethno-religious paradigm. 

 

For additional information, please contact:

Marwan Dalal, Executive Director