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Lisa Hajjar
It Is Raining Documents, Hallelujah!
![[Image from Pirhayati]](/content_images/3/sm_Wikileaks_Imagefrompirhayati.jpg "[Image from Pirhayati]")
Today’s document dump of over 250,000 US diplomatic cables, courtesy of WikiLeaks, is like Santa Claus came early. These confidential cables were exchanged between 250 US embassies and the State Department, a handful dating back to the 1960s and 1970s but most from the last few years. They contain harsh and diplomatically embarrassing assessments of foreign leaders, information about diplomatic arm twisting and bargaining, and under-the-wire politics such as the request by ...
Keep Reading »Lordy, Lordy, I Declare! Big Brother Is in My Underwear
![[Junk inspection at an American Airport. Image from AP.]](/content_images/3/sm_junktouching.jpg "[Junk inspection at an American Airport. Image from AP.]")
If you are traveling by air in the United States, your “junk” will be inspected visually or manually by agents working for the Transportation Security Agency. Junk is hipster code for your butt, although it doesn’t discriminate against your balls and/or breasts. Non-hipsters learned the term when a traveler named John Tyner used his cell phone to record his own physical pat-down, during which he balked at the professional groping and said, “If you touch my junk, I’m going to ...
Keep Reading »The Liberal Ideology of Torture: A Critical Examination of the American Case
![[Image by Deesillustration.com]](/content_images/3/sm_WaterboardingDeesillustration.jpg "[Image by Deesillustration.com]")
In recent days, George W. Bush has put American torture back in the news again as he flaks his new memoir, Decision Points. On November 8, NBC interviewer Matt Lauer questioned Bush about authorizing waterboarding, to which he responded, “Damn right.” Richard Falk characterized this admission of criminality as an “uncoerced confession.” Waterboarding is torture, and torture is a crime. In fact, torture is not just a run-of-the-mill crime; it is a gross crime under ...
Keep Reading »Tweeting from Guantanamo: Recording History 140 Characters at a Time
![[Guantanamo Bay prison. Image from Lisa Hajjar]](/content_images/3/sm_guantanamoprison.jpg "[Guantanamo Bay prison. Image from Lisa Hajjar]")
Starting in the spring of 2009, whenever the Guantánamo (GTMO) military commissions hold hearings, there is usually a journalist or two—or more for high profile cases when the press pool is larger—tweeting from the Media Operation Center (MOC). The court proceedings are broadcast to the MOC on closed circuit TV. Journalists who opt not to go into the court, where all electronic devices are prohibited, can tweet a real-time record of interactions and quotes 140 ...
Keep Reading »Reporting From Guantanamo: The Prison Tour (Photos)
![[A Prisoner at GTMO. Image from Anonymous Source]](/content_images/3/sm_PrisoneratGTMO.jpg "[A Prisoner at GTMO. Image from Anonymous Source]")
Twenty-five journalists flew on a chartered plane down to Guantánamo Bay on October 22, 2010, to report on the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian 24-year-old who has been in US custody for one-third of his life. We would have been on the island (Cuba) a week earlier but for a sudden change of plan—again. The original original plan, let’s call it Khadr Trial 1.0, had a start date of August 12, and indeed the trial did start on that day. But at 4:00 p.m., Khadr’s military ...
Keep Reading »A Meditation on the Importance of the Perpetrator-Centered Perspective to Theorizing about Justice
![[Image from Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]](/content_images/3/sm_perpetratorperspective.jpg "[Image from Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]")
My research and writing tends to focus on gross injustices, specifically on gross crimes—war crimes, torture, crimes against humanity and genocide. The perpetration of most kinds of crimes—and certainly these—is, by definition, “legal injustice.” While we may quibble about and legitimately criticize various standards and models of criminal justice, when it comes to gross crimes, as I argue here, the prosecution of perpetrators is an essential if elusive means to produce ...
Keep Reading »Apologizing for Human Experimentation: Not Finished Yet
![[Image from Glossynews.com]](/content_images/3/sm_humanexperimentation.jpg "[Image from Glossynews.com]")
On October 1, 2010, President Barack Obama issued an official apology for secret US medical experiments in the 1940s in which 696 Guatemalan prisoners were infected with syphilis and gonorrhea to test the effectiveness of penicillin. The objective of these experiments, according to Susan Reverby, the Wellesley College medical historian who uncovered documents about this study, was to keep American soldiers safe from sexually transmitted diseases. In a joint statement, ...
Keep Reading »Salaam Salim: A Review of The Oath
![[Salim Hamdan. Image byJanet Hamlin; Abu Jandal. Image from The Oath.]](/content_images/3/sm_salaamsalimimage.png "[Salim Hamdan. Image byJanet Hamlin; Abu Jandal. Image from The Oath.]")
The Oath, directed by Laura Poitras. USA, 2010. The Oath by filmmaker Laura Poitras weaves a documentary account of the lives of two Yemeni men to offer a fresh perspective on the “war on terror.” The man you have probably heard of, Salim Hamdan, is conspicuously absent because it was shot while he was locked away in the US naval base on the south side of Cuba. Like a ghost, Salim haunts the other man, the film’s main protagonist, his brother-in-law “Abu Jandal.” It was Abu ...
Keep Reading »Waiting for History: A Meditation on the Trial of Omar Khadr
The Guantánamo military commission trial of Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr began on August 12. But at 4 p.m. on the first day, Khadr’s lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapsed in the courtroom from extreme pain related to a surgery he had earlier in the summer. Jackson and all the other trial participants and attendees—except Khadr, of course—were transported back to the mainland. Had the trial not been interrupted, by now the forty-some scheduled witnesses would ...
Keep Reading »Is There A Pill For This?
![[Image from OliviaB]](/content_images/3/sm_IsThereaPillforThis_image.jpg "[Image from OliviaB]")
In my first Jadaliyya post, I described my “great and terrible obsession” with torture. Generally speaking, I love my obsession; thinking and talking about torture in an age of torture seems not only rational and reasonable but politically responsible. I’d bet my torture-related information command center (i.e., the part of my brain that stores, categorizes and operationalizes torture data) would be a source of great riches if there was a Jeopardy-Torture game ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California – Santa Barbara. Her research and writing focus on law and legality, war and conflict, human rights, and torture. She is the author of Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005). In addition to being a Co-Editor at Jadaliyya, she serves on the editorial committees of Middle East Report and Journal of Palestine Studies. She is currently working on a book about anti-torture lawyering in the United States.
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