For the April BK Reads meeting, we won't be reading a book. Instead, we'll be reading a court decision, specifically a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court, the "Judgement on the Interrogation Methods  applied by the GSS," decided September 6, 1999. This case is the Israeli Supreme Court's effort to impose the rule of law in the interrogations of suspected terrorists, interrogations that are carried out by the General Security Service (GSS). The decision is only about 30 pages long, and not terribly technical, so please don't feel you need to be a lawyer or an expert on Israeli law to read it and join this session!

Briefly, here's what the Supreme Court decides. First, it concludes that there is no authority for torturing or brutalizing prisoners in Israeli law. This decision is in sharp contrast to the apparent position of the Bush Administration, which seems to feel that the President has inherent constitutional power to authorize the CIA's use of techniques like waterboarding.

However, the contrast is not complete, because the second decision the Israeli Supreme Court reaches is that "if a GSS investigator - who applied physical interrogation methods for the purpose of saving human life - is criminally indicted, the 'necessity' defense is likely to be open to him in the appropriate circumstances." (¶ 34 of the decision) The Court quotes the language of Article 34(1) of Israel's Penal Law, defining the necessity defense:

"A person will not bear criminal liability for committing any act immediately necessary for the purpose of saving the life, liberty, body or property, of either himself or his fellow person, from substantial danger of serious harm, imminent from the particular state of things [circumstances], at the requisite timing, and absent alternative means for avoiding the harm."

One of the notorious "torture memos" from the Bush Administration's Justice Department made much the same argument about US law.

So: we will discuss whether the reasoning of the Israeli Supreme Court is right or wrong, for Israel itself but also for the United States.

For a copy of the decision in English, you can download it from http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/mena/doc/torture.html, or e-mail Steve Ellmann.