You don't often find in the Boston Globe an article that puts forth Israel as a model for the legal treatment of terrorist detainee rights--or, for that matter, as an exemplar of anything good. Except insofar as it puts the United States in a terrible light. I don't think that was the intent of the authors of yesterday morning's op-ed, "The Israeli model for detainee rights," by Professor Martha Minow and Assistant Professor Gabriella Blum, both of the Harvard Law School and formidable legal scholars. I don't know Blum. But I do know Minow, and she is a very exacting civil libertarian. It seems to me that the point of their column was to show that Israel, which is under unceasing terrorist threat and exposed every day to daily terrorist operations (mostly aborted, thank God, by Israeli security forces), seems to be able to operate with greater deference to human rights standards than the United States. Compare, as Minow and Blum do, the Military Commissions Act, enacted a fortnight ago in Washington, and the Unlawful Combatants Law, passed by the Knesset in 2002. The differences are material and many. They applied in the beginning specifically to Lebanese combatants (like Hezbollah members) or other non-Palestinian detainees. Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Gaza Palestinians detained for terrorist offenses also come within the purview of the 2002 law. This ranges from the very initial legal framework under which prisoners are held--that is, there must be an initial judicial review within 14 days. Detainees have the right to legal counsel, judicial review of the detaining warrant every six months, and appeals up to the Israeli Supreme Court, which is obliged, given specific findings, to release the prisoner. The conditions for detentions, as Gabriella and Martha point out, are more generous to prisoners in Israel, with regard to medical treatment, clothing, religious activities, food, correspondence, etc., than comparable prisoners of the United States. Plus, of course, prisoners receive visitation rights by the International Red Cross. Palestinians from the West Bank are either tried by criminal courts or detained by administration detention. In either case, these prisoners' detention is reviewed every three or six months, also with a right of appeal to a Supreme Court justice. The above is just a quick précis. The complete piece is not what one expects. Believe me, it is persuasive ... and, for an American, more than a bit demoralizing.