Rockbites: Israel continues to practice torture of civilians

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November 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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Israel continues to practice torture of civilians
21 November 2001

(As a human rights oriented Web site—we’re here to raise funds for human rights as well as to expose cutting edge pop—Rockbites occasionally brings you non-music-related stories. Here’s one.)

According to non-governmental human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and according as well to the United Nations, Israel has engaged in torture of Palestinian prisoners for decades in an effort to gain information to avert terrorism.
    The practice may well be self defeating: submitting to torture is a traditional form of zealous martyrdom in Islam.
    The fear and hatred of Israel by extremists among the majority Islamists in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—who outnumber Jews worldwide roughly 100 to 1—may appear patently paranoiac. But Islamist extremists use the ongoing practice of torture by Israel as evidence of zulm (exceptional circumstances of oppression) and therefore as justification for jihad (holy war).
    Not only do Israel’s torture policies violate international law as well as the rulings of their own Supreme Court; they appear to perpetuate and perhaps inflame the conflict they seek to defuse.
    Amnesty International yesterday reported to the UN’s Committee Against Torture in Geneva, Switzerland that “...since the September 1999 [Israeli] High Court of Justice judgement which banned interrogation methods constituting torture, there has been strong evidence that these methods—including sleep deprivation often seated in painful positions; prolonged squatting on haunches; painful handcuffing—are now being used again.”
    Amnesty went on to say “We regret that notwithstanding the High Court of Justice’s 1999 ruling and the [UN] Committee Against Torture’s clear statement in 1997 that these methods constitute torture, the State of Israel, in its report to the Committee, continues to deny this.” | UN Convention Against Torture | | Israeli torture trial article from HRW | | UN conclusions on Israeli torture, 1997 | | essay: Martyrdom in Jihad | | top of page |

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