The author, a physician and medical ethicist, argues that the alleged abuses at Israel's Sde Teiman detention center reflect a universal human tendency towards brutality in war, highlighting the ethical challenges faced by militaries in maintaining humanity while dealing with enemy combatants...
In legend, Achilles, Greek warrior and hero of the Trojan War, fought Trojan prince Hector to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus. Hector had killed Patroclus, and he planned to cut off Patroclus’ head and give his body to the dogs for food. Before the fight, Hector waits for Achilles and then proposes that whoever wins, be it him or Achilles, will respect the other’s body and return it for proper burial. Achilles refuses, saying that there is “…no love between us. No truce till one or the other falls and gluts with blood.” After Achilles kills Hector, he strips him naked and drags his corpse behind his chariot three times around the walls of Troy. Brutality engenders brutality.
When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the aftermath found widespread evidence of the desecration of the body, both living and dead. Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel managed the mass casualty event. The extent of indiscriminate rape, murder, and mutilation left the Israeli population in a state of rage. On the evening of Oct. 7, a detention center to hold captured suspected terrorists was set up at the existing military base, Sde Teiman. More than 1,000 detainees suspected of terrorist activities have been held there pending transfer to other facilities.
On Oct. 14, Israel built a field hospital next to the detention center. This field hospital was created to care for injured suspected perpetrators of the massacre. Despite the rage of the Israeli population, the Israeli Army is bound to follow the law concerning the handling of detainees. The ethical practice of medicine obligates physicians and practitioners to provide those detainees with proper medical care regardless of who they are or what they have done.
On July 29, 2024, Israeli Military Police took into custody 10 reservist Israeli soldiers tasked with guarding detainees at Sde Teiman. A physician at the field hospital reported finding an injury in a detainee, suggesting sexual assault. The soldiers were suspected of aggravated sodomy (a charge equivalent to rape), causing bodily harm under aggravated circumstances, abuse under aggravated circumstances, and conduct unbecoming of a soldier. After a review of evidence, five of the 10 soldiers have been released. The remaining five have been remanded to house arrest. Israeli military law jurisprudence defines these charges, and that will establish the available defenses.
The holding of detainees normally falls to a Military Police (MP) brigade. In understanding the sexual abuse claims currently engulfing Sde Teiman, it may be helpful to review the experiences of some of their US counterparts.
We know a great deal about the experiences of American MPs, who run permanent military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Published studies have revealed grim accounts of detainee abuse at these facilities. Suicide and suicidal ideation have been reported among guards who completed tours at Guantanamo, along with myriad other severe psychiatric symptoms.
The real problem is how the stress of prolonged combat makes some good soldiers do terrible things. The book “Black Hearts” tells the story of four U.S. Army soldiers of the 1st Platoon, Bravo Company. A widespread breakdown of discipline resulted in depression and drinking, and four platoon soldiers raped, murdered, and set on fire a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. To even attempt to make sense of this horrific crime, it must be recognized how the platoon was subject to unrelenting violence in the triangle of death. All four platoon soldiers were convicted and punished. One of the four later committed suicide.
And the phenomena of MPs and military personnel conducting unspeakable atrocities in the course of official duty are not limited to the past quarter-century. Though rarely spoken, US soldiers raped and looted during WWII. Some of these soldiers were tried by Army court-martial, found guilty, and executed.
In Sde Teiman, the guards were reservists, non-MP soldiers with limited experience and training. If it can be verified that sexual abuse occurred, it would point not only to illegal and immoral conduct by the guards but also to a chain of command failure.
To embrace moral conduct, a military must understand and grapple with the coalescence of operations, military history, officer/non-commissioned officer duties, mental health, deployment, and many other issues. Problems at Sde Teiman may have been brewing for months. Accounts by people working at Sde Teiman from May 2024 claim some detainees were beaten as revenge for what was done by Hamas on Oct. 7. The Israeli military condemns such actions. Still, the top brass does not always have eyes on all facilities at all times. IDF MPs arrested soldiers tasked with guarding detainees at Sde Teiman based on probable cause.
If allegations of sexual abuse are true, rather than pointing to some personality trait endemic to IDF soldiers, the evidence may point to the reality that throughout human history, brutal circumstances have engendered brutal dispositions. As evidenced by the famous Milgram experiment on obedience to authority and the Stanford Prison Experiment, the design of such places can promote and transform well-meaning people into torturers. Both studies demonstrated the power of social situations and hierarchies and how people can comply with those roles even when they are arbitrary. The most alarming findings were about how people can be manipulated into harming others, even when they may disagree.
However, these psychological experiments often overlook that a third of us resist Achilles’ savage tendency. Mistreatment of enemy combatants is not the IDF norm. Delivering care to enemy combatants in conflicts has been a long-held principle. In 2004, Yuval Bitton, then a 28-year-old dentist, diagnosed current Hamas Chief Yaha Sinwar with a life-threatening brain tumor. Sinwar was transferred to Soroka Medical Center to undergo lifesaving treatment. Years later, Soroka Medical Center would be the place to care for the victims of Oct. 7 because of a murderous plan conceived by Sinwar.
Israel is democratic, with a fair-minded legal system. Israel signed and ratified the Convention against Torture. After 9/11, the US developed so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” to question high-value detainees. In a US Office of Public Affairs report, enhanced interrogation was formally rejected. Under the pressure of constant war for the last 75 years, Israel may feel compelled to gather intelligence under extraordinary means. Politics aside, it would still be false to claim Israel baked in abuse at Sde Teiman from the beginning.
A functioning Israeli legal system will seek to punish responsible parties. It is a testament to Israel’s humanity that, despite being in the vortex of brutality, it strives to remain moral. The gods protected Hector’s body after Achilles killed him. Achilles is ultimately punished for his actions. The god Apollo guided the arrow of Paris to the only spot where Achilles was vulnerable. In these circumstances, Israel’s fate lies in its capacity to guard itself where all people are most vulnerable — in the heel of our humanity.
Joel Zivot is a practicing physician in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine and a senior fellow in ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Zivot, who also holds a legal master’s degree, is a recognized expert who advocates against the use of lethal injection in the death penalty and is against the use of the tools of medicine as an arm of state power. Follow him on “X”/Twitter @joel_zivot
Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.
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