Police Beating and Torture in Israel

by Maureen Meehan

Azzam Maraka woke up early one morning last month for the pre-dawn Muslim prayer. After about 15 minutes, he looked down from the third-floor veranda of his sister’s Ramallah apartment and saw two Israeli border policemen guarding six Palestinian workers they had caught attempting to slip past an army checkpoint to get to jobs in Jerusalem.

Maraka reached for his Super 8 video camera and filmed the two soldiers kicking the men in the groin and slapping, punching, threatening and taunting them. The video shows one of the policeman bouncing on the shoulders of one of the men who are all sitting in a squatting position with their heads facing the ground.

At one point, a passerby stops and apparently asks the officers why they are abusing the men. One of the border policemen slaps him, audibly, in the face. Moments later the same man is seen still talking to the two policemen, as if nothing unusual had happened.

For much of the 45-minute video, the two Israeli border policemen, 19 and 20 years old, are seemingly bored, indicating that their violence is not only an expression of contempt toward the Palestinians, but also a means of changing the routine. The videotape also revealed how both sides seemed to accept the treatment as normal.

“It’s an everyday occurrence. Most everyone I know has been beaten or somehow abused or humiliated by the border police—including myself,” said Azzam. For that reason, initially he did nothing with the video cassette, assuming that no one would be interested in its contents.

Finally, after five weeks, Azzam was convinced by friends to contact a journalist who then passed the video to Israeli TV which aired it on Nov. 18.

Within hours of the telecast, Israel’s internal security minister, Avigdor Kahalani, arrested the two border policemen and suspended them from active duty, saying he would not let the behavior of a few shame the entire force.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu labeled the incident unpardonable and said “it flies in the face of the very strict standards…kept by Israeli soldiers and policemen.” Border police chief Yisrael Sadan chimed in on cue and assured the public that men like those seen in the video have no place in the Border Police.

Palestinians also were shocked—not by the film footage but by the public display of hypocrisy on the part of the Israeli leadership at all levels. Palestinians say this case is unique only because it was captured on film.

As Israeli public figures denounced and condemned what they insisted was an isolated incident, Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair put a damper on the breastbeating by releasing a report confirming that border police brutality against Palestinians is the rule rather than the exception.

Ben-Yair said his office has received hundreds of complaints this year. He added that there is indeed a worsening in the levels of violence, which he confirmed was widespread.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, also reports a dramatic increase in border police beatings as Palestinians, desperate for work after prolonged closures, run the risk of being caught entering Israel illegally. As a rule, most are beaten but not arrested.

“There seems to be an official policy of beatings, abuse and degradation…They’re using the beatings as a deterrent to keep Palestinians out of Israel,” said Jessica Montell of B’Tselem, who noted that checkpoint violence became more severe over the past summer.

Many Palestinians believe that while there may not be explicit government orders for Israeli security forces to act more brutally, soldiers may view the strident policy of the Netanyahu government as implicit permission to behave more aggressively toward Palestinians.

Citing a recent B’Tselem investigation, Montell explained that while it is the border police that most often come into contact with Palestinians, there is a larger phenomenon of increased abuse and degradation not just by the border police but by other Israeli security forces as well.

In fact abuses are rampant in other security services of the state of Israel, which is the only country in the world where torture is openly and officially sanctioned by the governing parliament, the Knesset. Since 1994, a special Knesset ministerial committee, made up of representatives from left-leaning Meretz as well as Labor and Likud parties, has routinely approved the license of the secret police chief to order more intense forms of physical pressure to be used during interrogation.

Under Israeli regulations, certain forms of torture are legal while others require the specific approval of the head of the secret police. The torture methods that do not require special approval, termed moderate physical pressure, include tying up prisoners in twisted positions for up to five days continuously, sleep deprivation, covering detainees’ heads with filthy cloth sacks for days, light body-shaking, and keeping the prisoner in a small windowless cell for weeks with music blaring 24 hours a day.

Israeli attorneys confirm that nearly every Palestinian who is interrogated is tortured in this manner. Judges routinely permit this torture by extending the interrogation period and not prohibiting torture. A normal interrogation period is at least one month and is generally extended for an additional 30 days.

More intense torture methods such as hanging for long periods in contorted positions—which causes permanent internal organ and joint damage—and severe body-shaking, which caused the death of one Palestinian detainee last year, require the approval of the head of the secret police. Permission is generally given, say attorneys. In order to stop the torture, the handful of Israeli attorneys representing Palestinian prisoners must appeal to the Israeli High Court, where their petitions generally are rejected.

Israeli attorney Allegra Pacheco, who previously practiced law in the United States, pointed out that with Palestinians, there is no presumption of innocence and that they have no right to remain silent.

If a Palestinian detainee keeps silent during interrogation, the judge uses that as a justification to extend the interrogation period, which can last up to three months. If interrogators come up with nothing—as they often do—they then place detainees in administrative detention and hold them without charge or trial for up to a year or more, said Pacheco, who added that coerced confessions can indeed be used in Israeli courts. “I am constantly presenting appeals to prohibit continued torture,” said Pacheco. “When I use the word torture in court, the judges bristle. Who am I to call it torture when it is actually legal here?”

On three occasions during the month of November, the Israeli High Court ruled to permit the secret police to continue to use torture.

In the case of Mohamad Hamdan, a 30-year-old student from Birzeit University, the High Court approved increasing the severity of torture. The court deferred to the secret police’s argument that Hamdan falls under the ticking bomb category—that torture is necessary to avert the loss of lives in a possible terrorist attack.

Hamdan’s attorney, Andre Rosenthal, says his client is no longer being interrogated but is currently forced to spend days on end sitting on a low stool with his hands tied behind his back in his cell with music blaring 24 hours a day. Hamdan was recently driven to northern Israel by his jailers, who threatened to deport him.

Common Knowledge

Rosenthal said that it has been common knowledge that Israel has used torture for a long time. “Unlike other countries that attempt to conceal it, we come right out and say it: torture is legal here and officially used,” he explained.

Days after Rosenthal’s unsuccessful bid to stop his client’s torture, judges in another case ruled to permit the secret police to continue to torture Hebron resident Khader Mubarek.

A third case was presented in late November by attorney Lea Tsemel on behalf of 29-year-old Jerusalemite Atef Abu Sirhan. Tsemel’s petition to stop the torture also was rejected.

In an unprecedented move in late November, the United Nations requested that the government of Israel submit a detailed report on its torture proceedings. Israel has two months to complete the report.

In the midst of the furor caused by the video, the torture, and the general increase in security force brutality, an Israeli court fined four Israeli undercover agents a fraction of one cent for killing a Palestinian passerby at a checkpoint in 1993. The four agents also were sentenced to one hour in prison.

Meanwhile, Azzam Maraka, the early morning worshipper who videotaped the casual beating of Palestinian laborers, was beaten himself and then arrested in front of his East Jerusalem jewelry shop along with his brother, following a week of Israeli threats and harassment. Maraka and his brother’s beating happened to be filmed by a European cameraman who was detained and subsequently threatened by police with deportation if he turned the video over to Israeli television.

Azzam Maraka then spent 48 hours in jail before being released on bail to assure his appearance in court to face as yet unspecified charges. His brother, Husam, ended up in the hospital in a neck brace.

In an additional move that speaks volumes about Israel’s justice system, the two Israeli border policemen filmed by Maraka beating the six Palestinians have been released from jail. They are under house arrest awaiting their trials.