A smart friend writes:
Does some significant part of the attraction to torture among American policy
and intelligence elites emanate from a wised-up/tough/glamorous idea of torture
whose source is Israel?
A current blog by Martin Peretz speaks of torture as by no means necessarily a
bad thing. Several years ago, c. 2004, at the NYU Remarque Center, a visiting
Israeli scholar observed to an American historian after a talk on human rights,
"I have concluded there is no point talking to you Americans about torture–
your attitude is not serious." He meant the attitude of American liberals such
as could be found at the Center. Israelis, he implied, knew in their bones that
torture was necessary. The remark was passed on by the American, whom it deeply
impressed–he thought it a salutary rebuke, a piece of worldly wisdom. How many
share this double perspective?
Note that, though the Israeli Supreme Court outlawed torture in 1999, the
reports of Israeli torture of Palestinians have been drastically persistent.
This BBC story serves as a reminder that the first confirmed reports of
the severity of Israeli torture of Palestinians emerged in 2000, and referred to the First Intifada, 1988-1992: the period of the emergence of American
"hyperpower" neoconservatism, with its impartial interest in all the stratagems
of aggression and coercion.
