In Cold Type

haven't done much mental spring cleaning because so much of the last month has been taken up with brooding and spewing about the crisis in the Middle East; no doubt the coming months will be much the same. After putting your mind to this issue for a long time--witness Shimon Peres, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and so many others--cobwebs gather and it becomes hard to see through the accumulated dust. So it was pleasant to turn to Legal Affairs, the new publication of the Yale Law School, edited by Lincoln Caplan, which casts an intelligent eye over a broad and spacious intellectual terrain.

Of course the first item I turned to--obsessively--was an article on Israel, more specifically on the legendary Supreme Court President Aharon Barak (no relation), by Emily Bazelon--thankfully the only Middle East piece in the inaugural issue, or who knows how I might have been sidetracked. In 1992, from his seat on the Israeli Supreme Court, he championed the Basic Laws that now serve the country as a kind of de facto constitution and give Israel one of the most progressive sets of human rights laws and precepts to govern any nation. But that was just a first step for this exceptional person.

In May 1998, in a historic pronouncement, he declared (I'm simplifying here) that torture of Palestinian detainees by the Shin Bet was not legalized under Israeli codes. This meant that one day there would be no more shabach--the technique of tying prisoners to kindergarten chairs, putting their heads in sacks and subjecting them to humiliation and psychological torture. It meant no more shaking, a favored method that disorients and injures without leaving visible signs. No more sleep deprivation. Barak later codified this ruling, when he "unequivocally declared for a unanimous court that the Shin Bet's methods of interrogating Palestinians detained without charges violated the rights to human dignity and freedom." But those were better days in Israel, and Bazelon points out that current conditions may have allowed the Shin Bet to violate the ban. The Public Committee Against Torture has filed two petitions to the court since September 2000, both arguing that the ban on torture has not been "fully enforced," as Bazelon understates it. One petition was withdrawn and the other rejected. Like so many of his generation who hoped to normalize life in Israel, Barak too has been undermined by the Degeneration of the Situation.

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