Perilous Death Penalty Bill Also Threatens Diaspora Jews, Who Rightfully Protest |
The debate over Israel’s death penalty bill has reignited the question of the right of non-Israeli Jews to weigh in on Israeli issues. Many Israeli proponents of the legislation routinely dismiss Jews like me in the diaspora who are against it based solely on the fact that we do not live in Israel and therefore should not have a say in the matter. One such death penalty supporter wrote on social media that “…although you are Jewish, you are not Israeli, nor do you live in Israel. Stay out of Israeli politics, and I’ll stay out of Canadian politics.”
The potential danger that Israel’s death penalty bill poses to global Jewry makes it entirely necessary for non-Israeli Jews to speak out. In the eyes of antisemites across the world, there is no distinction between Jews and Israelis. My own personal experience of antisemitic hatred supports this assertion. Israel’s war on Hamas in response to the mass killings and atrocities of October 7th, 2023 brought tremendous antisemitic outbursts against the members of my Jewish community here in British Columbia, Canada. The same held when my family and I lived in Washington, DC, at the start of the war. I vividly recall when, at that time, “Death to Israel” graffiti covered a bus stop just down the road from my children’s preschool in the US capital. The inseparable connection between Jews and Israelis in the minds of Israel’s enemies is precisely why non-Israeli Jewish voices should be a part of the discussion about an issue as vital to global Jewish safety as the death penalty.
The group “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty,” of which I am the co-founder, has the right – the obligation – to sound the alarm over this bill. Founded in 2020, L’chaim includes thousands of members in Israel and in the Diaspora who realize that the collective deterrence delusion that sustains this racist bill in the minds of so many proponents blinds them to the most imminent peril this legislation poses. Not only will it fail to deter terrorists – and betray Jewish values by cheapening life – but it will, in fact, incite and invite more murderous acts of terror. No invocation of the deterrence delusion – not even by the Shin Bet – can erase the reality that the death penalty will doom Israel to an ultimately catastrophic, self-destructive path that will endanger all the Jewish world.
Specifically, the death penalty’s well-documented brutalization effect would entice would-be martyrs to attack Jews. 19th-century writer Eliphas Levi highlighted the well-established relationship between the death penalty and the desire for martyrdom when he wrote that “(e)very head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.” Radical Islamist terrorists – like those who perpetrated horrific mass murder on October 7, 2023 – celebrate such martyrs in anticipation of the supposed rewards awaiting them in paradise. They prefer martyrdom in the actual act of killing, but if they can kill and then be placed on a pedestal – lauded as heroes facing the death penalty for their cause – then all the better. Their idealization of celebrity execution is especially true in a world where so many individuals hate Israel for how it treats its non-Jewish citizens. Why would Israel want to play into the hands of potential terrorists in this way?
A far more severe punishment for such individuals is incarceration, which forces terrorists to confront what they have done while enduring the constrictions of a maximum-security prison every day. As a Jewish prison chaplain, I can personally attest to this harsh reality.
Proponents of this bill maintain that executing terrorists will prevent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps in Israel. What they fail to recognize is that Israel can avoid this outcome simply by changing the law to forbid including anyone directly involved in murder in any future prisoner exchanges – without exception. Such legislation would solve the problem without creating new martyrs around whose memory other terrorists would assuredly rally.
This perilous bill poses an existential threat to the Jewish world. If the Knesset were to enact it – leading to the unconscionable stain of executions darkening the moral fabric of Israeli society – antisemitic extremists would assuredly blame all the world’s Jews for this state-sponsored killing program. The death penalty would neatly fit into their warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “death cult.”
Consider the probable future if Israel were to enact this legislation. As Ben Lynfield predicts, the bill, once passed, would mark a “looming death certificate for the Israel that was.” After the shock of the bill’s passage would settle, global nations would realize, as Ron Dudai has compellingly written, that the far-right will have cemented its ascendancy in Israeli society. Jewish death cult claims would gain credence worldwide. The bill would permanently decimate Israel’s already fragile moral compass in the minds of hundreds of millions of human beings and a vast majority of nations. As Israel would begin carrying out frequent executions of hundreds of prisoners, human rights activists the world over would continue to make legitimate comparisons with Iran and other global perpetrators of egregious judicial killings. The bill’s inherently racist nature – targeting only non-Jewish terrorists – would give only further weight to the argument that Israel is an apartheid state.
There are manifold reasons why this death penalty bill is, by definition, an abomination that, if enacted, would spell catastrophe for Israeli society and Jews everywhere. Those factors include the unmistakable truths that the death penalty is not a deterrence, incites further martyrs to attack Israel, violates the human right to life, always constitutes torture, risks executing the innocent, is racist in its application, and would traumatize Israeli citizen executioners. From Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump to Ben-Gvir – the scepter of execution has been used as a political tools particularly during election campaigns. It is for sound reason that Jewish tradition renders the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. In the wake of the events of the Holocaust, it especially behooves Jews everywhere to remember that many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing, and lethal injection. Famed death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel best articulated the stance of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” when he famously said of capital punishment that – in the shadow of the Holocaust – “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Israeli lawmakers should heed Wiesel’s message and recognize that the unnecessary, egregious trauma of imposing executions is not the answer in Israel today, and never should be – anywhere.
For all these reasons and more, L’chaim members have spoken out vociferously against this bill – and will continue to do so until Knesset members heed our voices of reason, for the sake of all the Jewish world.
Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM
Co-Founder: L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty
Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action