The Corruption Creeps Into Annual State Department Human Rights Report on Israel

By Eugene Bird

You can now mention in the Department of State’s report on Human Rights in Israel the word “torture.” That was a concession to the truth, but it took countless hours of discussion within the Department before it was decided to permit use of the term. You can mention Israel’s use of torture, however, only as “alleged.”

You also can mention the name of someone who claims to have been tortured. And you can give statistics on all sorts of practices in violation of human rights and civil rights in Israel in order to make the annual U.S. human rights report’s authors feel good about being balanced.

But you cannot mention that among those being tortured by America’s principal ally in the Middle East are American citizens. And if you plan to remain in U.S. government service, you’d better not mention the lack of response from the government of Israel to protests from the United States.

A Glaring Omission

Sources in the U.S. State Department claim that no mention was made of American citizens being tortured by Israeli occupation authorities because U.S. officials “did not want this to be just a report on U.S. policy and judgment, but a universal report.” Apparently it only looks to reporters like Clinton administration fear of retaliation by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s lobby in Washington, DC, and how it might react.

Hashem Mufleh is an 18-year-old who had spent several years going to school in his family’s native town of Ramallah, although he himself is a third-generation American. He was arrested in August, tortured, seen only a few times by the American consul in Jerusalem, and then forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, which he does not read, alleging that he was a member of Hamas.

The fact that it was an extorted confession was not mentioned in his trial nor in the annual U.S. Department of State Human Rights Report. His name was mentioned, but the Department of State chose not to mention the inconvenient fact that he is a U.S. citizen who had suffered the legalized torture that the Israeli government calls “moderate physical pressure.” It left him traumatized and unwilling to resist further. After more than five months, he “confessed” before a military judge and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. He will serve at least half that time if he maintains good behavior.

There is no reason why, except as a political concession to Israel, there is no mention of Mufleh’s American citizenship, according to retired U.S. consular officers. Some expressed both astonishment and outrage at the failure to identify Mufleh as American.

Amnesty International Criticizes State Department

The 22nd Annual Department of State Human Rights Report to Congress covers some 194 countries, is longer than the Starr report, and increasingly is becoming an important instrument of U.S. policy to force the pace of human rights reforms around the world.

At a hearing of the Christopher Smith subcommittee on human rights, Amnesty International testified to another lapse in the department’s treatment of Israeli practices. While praising the department for actually including the word “torture” among the activities of the Israeli interrogators, the Amnesty comment went on to condemn the Israeli government for seeking to “redefine” the word torture by calling it “moderate physical pressure.” By contrast, the U.S. State Department report claims only that “others” may call this torture, but it utterly fails to say how the U.S. describes such clear examples of Israel’s practice of plain old-fashioned torture.

If Zero Tolerance for Terror, Why not for Torture?

The U.S. says it has “zero tolerance” for terror, but apparently lets Israel continue to redefine torture. It also does not make clear why the U.S. seems to tolerate illegal abuse of American citizens who happen to have an Arab name or be of Palestinian descent when they are tortured.

The Report on Israel and the Occupied Territories this year is 24 pages long and emphasizes the fact that only 1,680 Palestinian prisoners are still being held in Israeli jails. It failed to mention how many of these prisoners are Americans, but the number is generally believed to be 25. Five of them are believed to be Palestinian Americans held for political crimes.

Actual vs. “Alleged” Torture

The report on Israel does deal with torture as mentioned above, but calls it “alleged,” while the separate report on “The Occupied Territories (Including Areas Subject to the Jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority)” calls it plain torture, not alleged.

By dividing the report between Israel and the occupied territories, the department sidestepped the uncomfortable question of how to define the areas under full Palestinian control, which includes all the larger towns and cities in both the West Bank and Gaza. Thus the State Department deferred having to recognize the independence of the Palestinian areas by continuing to call them “occupied.”

State Department’s Defense

In defending the fact that the report on Israel only mentioned Mufleh’s name but not his nationality, a State Department source said it was significant that for the first time the department had actually accused the Israelis of torture. Not mentioning that Mufleh was an American citizen was simply due to the desire to make the report more “universal,” applicable to all situations and without U.S. policy intruding, the source insisted.

However, the fact remains that Americans are being tortured for political reasons in Israeli prisons until they sign false confessions to crimes they did not commit. If Jewish Israelis were to be treated this way anywhere in the world, one can be sure there would be protests not only from Israel but from the American media.

It is time for the U.S. to say to both Israelis and Palestinians that torture is medieval. It leads to violence which leads to terror, and should be stopped altogether. It is monstrous that America’s largest, by far, foreign aid recipient is the only nation in the world where torture not only is practiced but also has been legalized under the euphemism of “moderate physical pressure.” It is even more monstrous that the U.S. allows it to continue.

Eugene Bird is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.