Graduations can be soporific events. Speakers talk in platitudes and the formalities seem endless. But I bolted upright as Dean Harold Koh of the Yale Law School spoke after receiving an honorary degree at the graduation exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Dean Koh talked about human rights and how the influence of the United States had diminished round the world because of the American claim of exceptionalism regarding human rights. We should not have "law free zones" he said, and added that we should not have "law free courts called military courts."

As news leaks out about the use of torture by the United States, the details become more and more appalling and the net is spread wider and wider. First the administration was forced to admit that the CIA had used waterboarding on several of the detainees now held in Guantanamo. Now we learn, that among other techniques, female guards pressed on the genitals of detainees gradually increasing the level of pain.

The administration claimed that the pictures at Abu Graib represented the work of low level soldiers acting on their own, now documents reveal that prisoners on Guantanamo were forced to parade nude before female guards. Some were held close shackled in the nude in cells under conditions of extreme cold.

In 1969 David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel visited Cape Town. He was by far the most important Israeli visitor to our small town. I remember his visit vividly. He met with the the leaders of the Zionist youth groups. At that meeting he was asked by one of the counsellors whether any Palestinians were expelled from Israel during the War of Independence. He responded passionately and angrily that no Palestinians were expelled in 1948 and that the Zionist leadership encouraged them to stay. They chose to leave because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told them that they would get two houses once they had driven the Jews into the sea. This was his version of the history of 1948 and I believed him.

Torture has gotten this administration in trouble again. Because of the use of torture the military trials at Guantanamo may never take place.

Salim Hamdan, who evidently was a driver for Osama Ben Ladin is the first to be tried before the new military commissions on Guantanamo. The administration admits that he was tortured while in detention. The judge in the case, Captain Keith J. Allred has ruled that the General supervising the courts Thomas W. Hartmann has acted improperly and ordered that General Hartmann cease involvement with any Guantanamo prosecutions.

This year is the first year that I hear Israelis remark that the State may be a temporary phenomenon: "I am happy to live in a Jewish state, to be alive at a time when Jews have a state. But the last state we had, the Maccabean one, two thousand years ago, lasted a hundred years, and this one will probably be shortlived, as well. We don't know how to be an autonomous people and live in a larger world. We are always overtaken by fanaticism," one Israeli told me.

We are a privileged generation: we live at a time when there is a free and democratic Jewish state. The words of hatikvah articulate the simple truth -- a two thousand year old hope of Jewish autonomy has been realized. For many, and certainly for most Jewish generations, the dream of a state was intimately connected to the possibility of fully living a life of Torah; for many Zionist thinkers, the possibility of statehood was a dream of no longer being victim but instead of being creators of a just society of a free people.

Every time I think that U.S.-sponsored torture has dropped off the national radar, new information or analysis comes to the forefront. A few magazines have taken up torture in recent issues, offering invaluable insight into the national debate over the use of waterboarding and other so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Israel is in the full throes of spring and planting season has started. One of the most significant activities with which Rabbis for Human Rights-Israel has been involved has been acting as human shields as Palestinians go out to plant their fields. Each year, settlers harass these farmers and frequently the military does not intervene.

As much as the defense of human rights is contingent on the just administration of law and the proper protections that the law offers, it equally depends on the attitudes of populations. Whatever the law may be on the books, policemen and women, soldiers in the field, prosecutors and average citizens all become responsible for the protection or violation of human rights.

The smoking gun has finally been revealed. Responding to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, the Justice Department has released a previously classified document it authored in 2001 which argues that the use of harsh interrogation methods does not constitute torture.

Democracies need to have an independent judiciary in order to defend civil liberties which can easily be trampled on by majority opinion swayed by alarmist media or politicians seeking to exercise power. But courts, too, can be caught up in the hysteria of the moment or be subject to political pressures. When that happens, democratic institutions are in severe danger.

The Supreme Court of Israel has issued a temporary restraining order stopping further work in Silwan by the private archaeological firm Elad. Elad has been accused of digging on private property of Arab landowners without permission, tunneling under Arab houses and causing structural damage. The issues are especially contentious because the Arab residents of Silwan see the intrusions as an attempt to move them from their neighborhood which lies just south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

I will never forget touring Silwan with Arik a few years ago when we went to Israel to rebuild the Dari home. We listened to a local Palestinian resident of Silwan talk about the harassment from those religious Israeli extremists who have occupied homes of Palestinians in Silwan.

They put fences and barricades around their homes, and have a security force to protect them, as their hostile takeover of these homes is not supported by their neighbors (big surprise!). One can see these houses by the huge Israeli flags that dot the neighborhood, also conveying a clear and powerful message.

Rabbi Tzvi Weinberg, former chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, wrote this account of the hearing on Rabbi Arik Ascherman's arrest:

It is Friday noon (March 14, 2008), and I just returned from the law court in Jerusalem where five people came to support Arik after his arrest yesterday, and to protest the injustice of his detention. Besides my wife and myself, Rabbi Barry Leff and his wife and a 79 year old activist from Netanya who has participated in RHR programs were there.

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Rabbi Barry Leff was a member of the RHR-NA Board before he made aliya to Israel. He wrote this account of the hearing on the arrest of Rabbi Arik Ascherman:

March 14, 2008
Redeeming Captives
Today I had the rare opportunity to perform a mitzvah I have not done before: redeeming captives.

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