and the shaken vigorously. Statements that were found to be made under this kind of non-lethal
pressure could not - - at least in theory - - be introduced in any court of law both because they
were involuntarily secured and because they were deemed potentially untrustworthy, at least
without corroboration. 2
But they were used as leads in the prevention of terrorist acts.
Sometimes the leads proved false, other times they proved true. There is little doubt that some
acts of terrorism – which might have killed many civilians – were prevented. There is also little
doubt that the cost of saving these lives – measured in terms of basic human rights – was
extraordinarily high.
In my classes and public lectures in Israel, I strongly condemned these methods as a
violation of core civil liberties and human rights. The response that people gave, across the
political spectrum from civil libertarians to law-and-order advocates, was essentially the same:
but what about the “ticking bomb” case?
The ticking bomb case refers to variations on a scenario that has been discussed by many
philosophers, including Michael Walzer, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jeremy Bentham. The current
variation on the classic “ticking bomb case” involves a captured terrorist who refuses to divulge
information about the imminent use of weapons of mass destruction, such as a nuclear, chemical
or biological device, that are capable of killing and injuring thousands of civilians.
In Israel, the use of torture to prevent terrorism was not and is not hypothetical; it was
and continues to be very real and recurring. I soon discovered that virtually no one in Israel was
willing to take the “purist” position against any form of torture or rough interrogation in the