Torture

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

How are we to respond to a recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of alleged terrorists?

According to Pew, 54% of Americans who attend church services at least once a week said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42% of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed.

The study did not include synagogue-attending Jews or Muslims, Hispanic Catholics, or Black Protestants (all of whom might be expected, out of the historical life-experience of their groups with being tortured, to oppose it more vigorously).

The Shalom Center was invited to join in an Amicus (friend of the court) brief in the case of Yousuf v. Samantar, involving whether survivors of torture by other governments can, in the US, sue officials of those governments as provided in US law. We agreed to join in the Amicus brief, along with other religious groups, and submitted an explanation of our stake in supporting the argument on appeal. For our explanation, see below. First, the essence of the argument we support is this:

When Congress passed the Torture Victim Protection Act (“TVPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1350 note (2000), it intended to allow survivors of torture to sue former officials of foreign governments in U.S. courts, on the understanding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1602-1611 (2000), would not bar suits against former officials accused of torture.

By Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, head of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. Dr. Sarraj has been an outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies.

The Psychosocial causes for the Palestinian Factional War
14 February 2007

Many questions even after Mecca meeting [creating a unity Hamas-Fatah government of occupied Palestine] remain … what has become of us? Our people have suffered for 59 years from displacement, homelessness, discrimination, impoverishment and expatriation, but they withstood that suffering and never killed each other; so what happened to us? T

WE CALL FOR A NATION-WIDE FAST ON OCTOBER 8
TO DISCOVER THE TRUE AMERICA;

TO MOVE FROM CONQUEST TO COMMUNITY,
FROM VIOLENCE TO REVERENCE

A Call from the Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah

America stands in great danger of becoming addicted to violence, at home and overseas.

Pervasive violence in American culture, society, and policy is expressed in mass murders like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech; in daily murders on the streets of our cities; in physical and sexual abuse in families and communities; in the obsession of our media with grotesque violence; in our government's decision to wage an unnecessary, morally abhorrent, and disastrous war; in its effort to make torture a legitimate instrument of policy; indeed, most lethal of all, in the ecocidal violence we are imposing on the earth itself.

Dear Friends,

On Sunday December 10, International Human Rights Day , 200 rabbis / rabbinical students gathered in the first-ever conference on Judaism and Human Rights, brought together by Rabbis for Human Rights / North America. Let me share with you a few glimpses into that meeting -- five moments:

1) Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American Catholic nun who went to Guatemala to serve the poor, was kidnapped in 1989 by a unit of the Guatemalan military commanded by a US CIA officer. She was tortured and repeatedly gang-raped. Her own hands were used by her torturers to torture a friend of hers. She survived; her friends and co-workers were tortured to death.

THE SHALOM CENTER
A Prophetic Voice in Jewish, Multireligious, and American Life
6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119
215/844-8494 www.shalomctr.org office@shalomctr.org

NOVEMBER 1 , 2006

The Honorable xxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Member of Congress [or
United States Senator]

Dear Congressman/ woman/ Senator:

I am transmitting to you a set of petitions signed by Philadelphians who gathered at the Federal Courthouse in Philadelphia on the day President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act.

We gathered to mourn the signing of the Act, which is a betrayal of the principles of the Constitution and of several of its specific passages.

By Kate Monaghan
CNSNews.com Correspondent
October 17, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - President Bush Tuesday signed into law the much contested Military Commissions Act of 2006, the law aimed at defining how suspects in the war against terrorism will be interrogated and prosecuted. Despite much criticism, the president insisted that the act would provide a just response to those accused of terrorism.

"These military commissions will provide a fair trial in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them," said Bush.

"These military commissions are lawful, they are fair and they are necessary," he added.

By GABRIELLA BLUM AND MARTHA MINOW

N Y Times  October 18, 2006
 
BEFORE ENACTING the ``Detainee Bill " (otherwise known as the Military Commissions Act) two weeks ago, Congress should have spent more time learning from the Israeli experience. Compared with Israel's security measures during a long and difficult experience with terrorism, the US Congress has gone too far in its willingness to compromise human rights and civil liberties. Security considerations, as legitimate and forceful as they are, do not justify such excessive measures, as the Israeli practice demonstrates.
 
Israel enacted its own Unlawful Combatants Law in 2002, with the purpose of providing a domestic legal framework for the prolonged detention of terrorists. Rejecting the terrorists' status as prisoners of war, the law instead provides for holding them ``until the end of hostilities." From its inception, it was intended not so much for the detention of Palestinian terrorists, who are either tried as criminals or held in administrative detention, but for others -- mostly from Lebanon or other Arab countries.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

MIAMI DIVISION

CASE NO. 04-60001-CR-COOKE/BROWN(s)(s)(s)(s)(s)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

vs.

JOSE PADILLA,
Defendant,
____________________________________/
MOTION TO DISMISS FOR OUTRAGEOUS GOVERNMENT CONDUCT
Mr. Jose Padilla, through undersigned counsel, moves this Court to dismiss the
indictment based on outrageous government conduct and in support thereof states:
BACKGROUND
Mr. Padilla was arrested on May 8, 2002, in Chicago O=Hare International Airport, as
he stepped off an airplane from Zurich, Switzerland. The arrest was purportedly authorized