Think Services Are Torture?

I’ve now learned with Rabbi Melissa Weintraub of Rabbis for Human Rights—North America twice, and both times I’ve been blown away by her passion and devotion to a cause that most people wouldn’t dare to take on: US sponsored torture. Weintraub and her cohort at RFHR are dedicated to getting Jewish communities in North American to be aware of the full extent of the torture problem in the US. Here’s a little excerpt from a handout entitled ‘An Overview of Torture and Abuse of US Military Detainees’:

Widespread interrogation methods in American detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay have included kicking, slapping, forced nudity, painful shackling into “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time, use of dogs, hooding and isolation, sensory bombardment, food, water and sleep deprivation, and threats to detainees and their family members. Other documented techniques include electric shocks and water-boarding (a form of near suffocation that produces a similar sensation to drowning).

The problem is greater and far worse than you’ve probably imagined, and RFHR is dedicated to making sure the Jewish community takes action on this issue. You can help by printing out and distributing any of the FREE resources on torture available at their website, including all kinds of texts that deal with torture in light of Jewish legal precedents. Or you can bring the HBO Film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib to your community, also for absolutely FREE. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) will even supply you with materials to help spur discussion and advocacy work after the screening. Sign your community or organization up here. I know that this is a hot and sensitive topic because so many people are itching to fight about torture in Israel, but I hope we can keep our eye on the proverbial ball and see what we can do to stop this kind of behavior in our own home country. Let’s make torture an important issue in the upcoming election. Just in case you still don’t think this is an important issue, or in case you think it has no spiritual relevance, here’s an excerpt from RFHR documentation of what went on at Guantanamo Bay:

In February 2005, the Pentagon confirmed leaked accounts that female interrogators repeatedly tried to "break" devout Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantánamo Bay through provocative sexual touching and suggestion— wearing skimpy clothing like miniskirts and lacy, thong underwear, making sexually explicit comments, and rubbing their bodies up against them. In one disturbing example, a female interrogator touched her breasts, rubbed them against a prisoner's back, and commented on his apparent erection. She then reached into her pants and removed what appeared to be red blood, but was in fact red ink, which she proceeded to smear on the prisoner's face, telling him she had cut off the water supply in his cell so he wouldn't be able to wash. After this incident was leaked to the press, a Pentagon inquiry revealed several other instances in which female interrogators had used red dye to pretend to wipe menstrual blood on the bodies or clothing of detainees. In July 2005, the Army released Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt's report of his investigation into abuses at Guantánamo, which concludes that "stripping detainees, forcing one to wear women's lingerie and wiping red ink on a detainee and telling him it was menstrual blood" are all "authorized approaches called 'ego down' or 'futility,' which are used to make the interrogation subject question his sense of personal worth or the value of resisting."