[rad-green] Letter in British Medical Journal: The campaign about doctors and torture in Israel five years on

*https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4386/rr-2
<https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4386/rr-2>British Medical Journal**
        11 February 2020*

The campaign about doctors and torture in Israel five years onBMJ 2014; 349
doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g4386 (Published 09 July 2014)Cite this
as: BMJ 2014;349:g4386
Rapid Response:Israeli doctors continue to enable Israeli intelligence
agency's torture industry

Dear Editor,

As a follow-up to previous BMJ correspondence on this subject, I wish to
add that the active complicity of Israeli doctors with torture in Israel
continues. (1) This is not only doctors attached to the intelligence agency
Shin Bet or working in the Israel Prison Service, but also doctors in
emergency rooms across Israel who write false medical reports. I write as a
doctor and as founder of Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), whose
detailed case studies “Ticking Bombs” (2007) and “Doctoring the evidence,
abandoning the victim” (2011), assembled irrefutable evidence for these
practices. (2) (3)

These abuses go back many years. In June 1993 I organized an international
conference in Tel Aviv on behalf of PHRI regarding torture in Israel. At
the conference, I highlighted a Shin Bet medical eligibility form
discovered by chance by an Israeli journalist. The Shin Bet doctor was
asked to certify whether the prisoner could be kept in isolation, whether
they could be tied up, could be hooded, and whether he could be made to
stand for prolonged periods of time. This was in effect a “fitness for
torture” form to be signed by the doctor. Four years later, a second form,
suspiciously similar to the first, came to light, yet Shin Bet always
denied that it had ever existed. At the time PHRI asked the Israel Medical
Association (IMA) to take action, as they are mandated to do as a member of
the World Medical Association (WMA)- the WMA’s Declaration of Tokyo forbids
any doctor to collaborate with torture, and directs them to speak out and
protect the patient when torture is suspected. The IMA would not act.

Our findings were published in the book “Torture: Human Rights, Medical
Ethics and the case of Israel” (1995) whose sale in Israel appears to be
banned.

26 years later, in late 2019, we witness the same course of events in the
case of a 44 year old Palestinian man Samer Arbeed whose interrogation left
him hospitalised in a life-threatening state, in coma on a respirator and
in kidney failure. No doctor who saw him, nor the Israeli Medical
Association, protested about his torture.

Moreover, doctors in emergency rooms across Israel write false medical
opinions in accordance with the demands of Shin Bet, and have done so for
years. PHRI documented such cases in “Doctoring the evidence, abandoning
the victim” (2011).

The Shin Bet medical eligibility form allows for: sleep prevention;
exposure of prisoners to extreme temperatures; beatings; being tied for
long periods in “stress” positions; being forced to stand for long periods;
being hooded for prolonged periods; sexual humiliation; solitary
confinement; no contact with family or lawyer. This kind of “eligibility”
leads the prisoner directly into the torture chamber — and the doctor knows
this. Moreover his presence in the unit confers on the interrogators the
moral authority of the medical profession and gives them confidence. In
this role he has always been shielded by the IMA. But a doctor who
cooperates with Israel’s torture industry is complicit in that very
industry. If a prisoner dies during interrogation, the doctor is an
accomplice to his or her murder. A recent report by Adameer, the
Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, gives a graphic
account of the kinds of torture and ill-treatment that continue. (4)

In Nazi Germany and Japan during World War 2, in South America in the
1970s/80s, in USA post-9/11 and elsewhere, history has demonstrated how
doctors can become loyal servants of regimes, aiding and abetting their
human rights crimes. The same goes for Israel.

Dr Ruchama Marton

Tel Aviv

1. Summerfield D. The campaign about doctors and torture in Israel five
years on.
BMJ 2014;349:g4386. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g4386
2. “Ticking Bombs”. Public Committee Against Torture in Israel/ Physicians
for Human Rights Israel. 2007. http:www <http://www/>.
stoptorture.org.il/en-node/69.
3. Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim: the Involvement of
Medical Professionals in Torture and Ill-treatment in Israel. Public
Committee Against Torture in Israel/ Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
stoptorture.org.il 2011.
4. Adameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Adameer collects
hard evidence on torture and ill-treatment committed against Palestinian
detainees. 2019. adameer.org.

*Competing interests: *Founder of Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcwAu%2BN0YH_R0Y2pfkvmYmRf_qepsycr5U6hcdKvf7HnzA%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>