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On the same day that the Washington Post was promulgating a story that the FBI was investigating the possibility Israel had a high-ranking spy in the U.S. government, the New York Times shot back with its own Israel-bashing feature. The Times piece, by its Jerusalem correspondent, Serge Schmemann, laid out in exquisite detail the charges that Israel was systematically torturing Palestinian Arab terrorist suspects.

Though the Post spy tale was fodder for some screaming tabloid headlines, how can any intelligent person be really shocked by the idea that even the best of allies spy on each other?

The story proves only that there are some people in the U.S. government who hate Israel so much that they would reveal classified information to give it a black eye. So what else is new?

However, the Times' torture story is far more troubling.

It must first be said that no democracy that is in a state of war (as Israel remains after 49 years of existence) can afford to fight bloodthirsty terrorists by the Marquess of Queensbury's rules.

When there is a ticking bomb, a situation with which Israel is all too familiar, the gloves and everything else have to come off.

In order to uncover the identity of terrorists, the location of their supplies, safe houses and useful sympathizers, I don't doubt that Israeli security officers have resorted to unpleasant, even awful methods of interrogation. As much as we are all appalled by this prospect, given the toll in Jewish and Arab blood exacted over the years (including the hundreds ruthlessly cut down since the signing of the peace accords), it would be irresponsible, even criminal, for Israeli authorities to refrain from any action that might save lives.

To take the absolutist position, which says that use of physical pressure on terror suspects under any circumstance is wrong, is morally irresponsible. Individuals can play at pacifism. Nations cannot.

Thus, I find much of the international criticism leveled at Israel by the U.N. panel studying this issue in Switzerland entirely hypocritical. In this case, Israel is not being judged by a double standard, but rather by a triple standard.

The double standard would be the failure to compare Israel to its Arab neighbors/enemies/peace partners, where torture and the lack of civil and basic human rights is the norm in their tyrannical regimes.

The triple standard is the decision to compare Israel's situation with fellow democracies which are at peace. The actions of Britain in its fight against Irish terrorists or the French against OAS terrorists in the 1960s and various separatists since then, or Spain against the Basques, is far worse than anything Israel is charged with.

Even the most hard-bitten of Hamas Islamic fundamentalists have the right to appeal to Israel's courts, and many have found the Jewish state's impartial judicial system a useful ally.

That said, I cannot pretend that the evidence of torture in Israeli prisons does not concern me deeply. It is inevitable that a practice which might be necessary in extraordinary cases or even routine terrorism investigations is likely to become the standard in all interrogations, once it is formally made legal.

Though the Israeli attempt to shoe-horn tactics for special circumstances into a code of law is a typically Jewish response to a difficult question, it is fundamentally flawed. One cannot insulate the criminal justice system which deals with non-security cases from these atrocities once they are made legal in some instances. Nor can such brutality, once it is considered OK against some, be confined only to those cases involving terrorism. Human nature dictates that it is bound to spill over into the rest of the system.

Witness the brutality of the Israeli police when dealing with demonstrators who opposed the Rabin administration's peace policies. The abuse that peaceful if energetic protest groups such as the "Women in Green" were subjected to by the police was astonishing.

The same sort of behavior was exhibited by Israeli army troops earlier this month when they were ordered to dismantle homes created by Jews living in the administered territories.

Ironically, the acceptance of a policy of brutality against Arab terror suspects may lie at the heart of this dismaying trend. When physical abuse of hostile Arabs becomes the norm, it is not that much of a jump from there to thinking that physical abuse of one's domestic political foes is also acceptable.

Much like the biblical injunctions that lessened the harshness of slavery in ancient Israel and even put regulations on that evil institution which sought to make it less prevalent, the Israeli physical pressure code is based on good intentions. But no matter how humanely applied, in the end, slavery is still slavery and torture is still torture.

There are no easy answers here, but Israelis and friends of Israel only kid themselves if they pretend that even rare and limited forms of physical pressure are not a danger to Israeli democracy.