Secrets Of The Shin Bet
From the latest New Scientist:
Michael Koubi worked for Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, for 21 years and was its chief interrogator from 1987 to 1993. He interrogated hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including renowned militants such as Sheikh Yassin, the former leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, who was killed in an Israeli attack this year. He claims that intelligence gained in interrogation has been crucial to protecting Israel from terrorism. He tells Michael Bond that, given enough time, he could make almost anyone talk.
In related news, Mossad has a new chief.
To me the most interesting thing about this is that it disproves, or at least casts doubt on, a commonly-held belief that to know the language of the Other automatically means one will have more sympathy for them. This interrogator was able to spend hours and hours of study — however long it takes to memorize the entire Qur’an — immersed in Arabic, learning different dialects, but he was always able to remember the overriding reason behind the study and to keep it instrumentalized for his government’s purposes. That’s simply incredible.
ya thats a great point. i also think that when u know ur enemy and you are driven you can do anything. i dont want to use the word ‘hate’, but i think hate can be a driving force that allows someone to remain focused. but btw the koran is filled with hate and when people learn or read it, it can be very easy to realize who you are dealing with and not get sidetracked, its actually empowering
I got such a kick out of his unfliching arrogance… classic. Nevertheless, I’m sure he’s done some good for Israel and the Jewish people, so maybe it’s as legitimate as he makes it seem.
This is simply an amazing day in the life of someone with a very odd job. I guess that the interrogator himself has to pass a battery of personality tests to get the job in the first place; his bosses would have no doubt as to where his sympathies lay. Then he would undergo a pretty serious process of regimentation to boot. There must be a certain amount of self-enforced disconnect with the human tendency to sympathise with someone, even the enemy, who is under duress. At one point they cover this subject:
“Q. Did you ever feel sympathy for the people you interrogated because of what you put them through?
A. Sometimes you can be sitting before someone who is 24 years old and he looks like a nice man. Then he admits to you what he’s done and you can change 180 degrees in what you feel about him. It has happened a lot. Sometimes when I’m interrogating someone I feel that I could kill him because of what he’s done. But if you want to achieve a result you have to keep your cool.
The point is we are acting against terrorists. If I thought someone was innocent or knew nothing I would release them immediately.
Q. Interrogation can leave people traumatised for years. Can you always justify it?
A. You can be sure that we never use physical or psychological methods that damage prisoners.”
Whether you take that last statement as gospel or with a grain of salt is entirely individual, assuming us posters were not there.
I don’t think it is hate that causes someone to remain that focuse though, hate is to passionate and out of control. I believe that the mindstate requires a more banal, businesslike existence.
“too” passionate.
Uh, well, I can’t let that “the koran is filled with hate” comment just slip by. Don’t be stupid. I don’t care if you’ve read it, picking up the book to read it and laying a judgment is just as stupid as my atheist friend who picked up my english edition of the tanakh, flipped to Joshua, was offended by it, and declared my religion to be barbaric. If you have no education about the koran you shouldn’t say dumb things about it.
And what I mean by that is — just reading it isn’t enough. You need to learn about it together with actual Muslims who can tell you about the schools of jurisprudence and Qur’anic interpretation. Otherwise you’re still ignorant.
This came up for me recently too– Joshua is a tricky text, with the slayings of innocent women and children. Can anybody out there help me rationalize this? And please spare me the “G-d said it was OK so it was OK” rationale.
sam:
you are correct, however my dearest family friend escaped from from iran 30 years ago. she was forced to learn the koran, memorze and learned it in school amongst muslim teachers. my insight into the text is from her explenations.
Ah. The whole “former subject of fundamentalist religious education who is now resentful atheist” thing. I know it well from a number of ex-Catholics I know. Again — all I’m saying is you have to be aware of the community in which someone encountered the text, and what community you yourself are part of when you encounter it yourself.
Ronen says
“This came up for me recently too– Joshua is a tricky text, with the slayings of innocent women and children. Can anybody out there help me rationalize this? And please spare me the “G-d said it was OK so it was OK” rationale.”
I’ll take a shot at this.
One possibility is that the killings were justifiable, even by today’s standards (arguably). This could be the case if the enemy nations were vicious and incorrigible, such that allowing them to continue to exist would virtually (or probably) guarantee that they would arise in a later generation and slaughter the Jews (or Hebrews, for you grad students). (No allusion to current events here; thankfully, the Jews have no enemies today who are both vicious and incorrigible. But if they did…) This would be a factual determination, and the facts are lost to us. (The prime example is Amalek, and in this case there is some evidence that this rationale would apply.) Yes, there’s some indication that the reason for wiping the nations out had to do with their immorality, but we don’t know if this was the sole reason.
Another possibility is that the killings were not justifiable by our standards. If so, then you can either believe that the situation was extraordinary in that the killings were mandated by G-d, or, if you don’t believe that, that this is a depressing episode in history in which our ancestors behaved as badly as all the other nations of the world at the time.
“To me the most interesting thing about this is that it disproves, or at least casts doubt on, a commonly-held belief that to know the language of the Other automatically means one will have more sympathy for them. This interrogator was able to spend hours and hours of study — however long it takes to memorize the entire Qur’an — immersed in Arabic, learning different dialects, but he was always able to remember the overriding reason behind the study and to keep it instrumentalized for his government’s purposes. That’s simply incredible.”
Not so incredible. Maybe he thought about the gruesomely mutilated dead bodies that terrorism produces and how important his job was to preventing it. You say “…for his government’s purposes.” Nice try at the “just taking orders” comparison. Most likely he did what he did out of his own sense of moral obligation, and I’m grateful.
Ronen,
From my limited knowledge, it seems to me that the rabbis did indeed support the “God said it was OK” line of reasoning about Joshua. However, they did their utmost to ensure that the situation should not be seen as generalizable. That’s about all I’ve got.
J,
“Just taking orders?” You said it, not me.
I’m aware that it’s the party line… that’s why I’m unsatisfied to some degree. I don’t think wiping out children is easily justifiable, because an incorrigible enemy is still an adult one