PAGE TITLE: FrontPage Magazine
ARTICLE TITLE: Judaism’s Pro-Death Penalty Tradition
DATE: Thursday
22 April 2004
AUTHOR: Steven Plaut
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Steven Plaut (born 1951) is an
American-born Israeli associate professor of Business Administration at the
University of Haifa and a writer. Plaut is a member of the editorial board of
the Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank.
 |
Steven
Plaut
|
Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition
By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Why the
Israeli Left's opposition to capital punishment is politically naive
and spiritually unsound.
One of
the most popular causes among Jewish liberals is opposition to capital
punishment. The Religious Action Center, the political SWAT Team of the Reform
movement, has long considered opposing capital punishment to be one of its
highest priorities. Many other groups of Jewish liberals, and some
non-liberals, oppose all forms of capital punishment, supposedly in the name of
Jewish ethics and the invariably misrepresented tikkun olam.
Whenever
one comes out in favor of capital punishment, one inevitably hears shrieks from
such folks about how execution is inhumane, how it violates human dignity, how
every human soul, even that of murderers, has been created in God`s image and
so should be preserved at all costs.
This is
all very interesting. There’s just one little problem, though. The Bible makes
it crystal clear that the way one acknowledges that human souls are created in
God`s image and deserving of respect and dignity is through capital punishment.
Just read Genesis 9:6: "A man who spills human blood, his own blood shall
be spilled by man because God made man in His own Image." Not just among
Jews, by the way, but among all sons of Noah.
In other
words, the preservation of human dignity requires capital punishment of
convicted murderers. The position of Judaism is the opposite of the position
espoused by liberals. It is precisely because of man`s creation in God`s image
that capital punishment is declared justified and necessary. Human dignity
requires execution of murderers, not compassion for their souls.
Moreover,
capital punishment is regarded by Judaism as a favor for the capital sinner, a
form of atonement and redemption. Ordinary murderers are allowed to achieve
atonement for their souls in their execution. Only especially vile murderers —
such as a false witness whose lies are discovered after the person who was
framed has been executed, or a man who sacrifices both his son and his daughter
to the pagan god Molokh — are denied execution because they are regarded as
beyond redemption through capital punishment. Again, execution preserves human
dignity, it does not defile it.
Israelis
have for years debated the pros and cons of capital punishment for convicted
terrorist murderers. Up to this point, Israel has never had a death penalty,
the lone exception being the execution of the Nazi beast Eichmann. Naturally, the
Beautiful Left is vehemently opposed to the very idea of capital punishment.
So maybe
the time is right to take a deep breath and step back and re-examine the issue.
Should Israel have a death penalty?
Opponents
of the death penalty say it does not deter terrorism or violence. But how do
they know? How do they know the level of violent crime the United States would
experience if it did not have a death penalty — or if it had a more widely
applied one? How do they know whether the level of terrorism would decrease in
an Israel with a death penalty compared to an Israel without one?
Actually,
the death penalty should be implemented against terrorists even if it doesn’t
deter terrorism. It should be implemented because it represents a great moral
statement. It is the moral and ethical thing to do. Executing terrorists makes
a statement that they are scum with no claim a right to life. Capital
punishment represents a moral and just vengeance. It represents a declaration
of good and evil. We do not build statues of heroes and otherwise honor them
because we necessarily believe these are utilitarian and will lead to the
emergence of new heroes, but rather because we are making a statement as a
society regarding our values and what we honor. Executing terrorists is
precisely the same sort of societal statement, in the opposite direction.
It is for
this moral reason that traditional Judaism unambiguously endorses the death
penalty for premeditated murder .It does not do so because of any sociological
speculation about the powers of deterrence, and it is clear that the death
penalty is viewed as a just punishment even if it deters nothing at all.
Opponents
of the death penalty argue that implementing it would represent capitulating to
the populist demands and pressures of the public. Huh? That is essentially a
concession that the general electorate favors it and so its establishment would
be the democratic thing to do. Denying the death penalty is elitist and
anti-democratic.
Opponents
of the death penalty in Israel argue that Arab terrorists would retaliate by
mistreating or killing Jews they capture. One does not know whether to laugh or
to cry at this claim. The PLO and its sister organizations already lynch,
torture and murder every Jew they can lay their hands on, including children —
all this while Israel has no death penalty. So what exactly is there to lose?
Opponents
argue that it would be dehumanizing to ask an Israeli to act as an executioner,
as the one who would push the button or pull the switch. They worry it would be
hard to find someone to play the executioner. My guess, however, is that the
number of volunteers for any such switch-pulling would be so large that the
Israeli government could balance the budget by auctioning off lotto chances to
pull it. Personally, I would offer family members of victims of terrorism first
"dibs."
Opponents
of the death penalty in Israel and elsewhere argue that errors in judgment
might be made and innocent people might be executed. This is a fallacious
argument even when discussing execution of criminals, but even more so when
discussing terrorists. There is no serious evidence I know of that any innocent
person has ever been executed in the United States. But more generally,
everything we do (and everything government does) carries some risk that an
innocent person might be killed as a result of those actions and policies.
Should we shut down the post office because postal trucks sometimes run over
innocent people? Should we ground all planes because sometimes innocent people
are killed in accidents? Even if there were a non-negligible risk of such
errors, that is certainly no reason not to have a death penalty.
Opponents
of the death penalty argue that it is expensive to implement. This is absurd.
Room and board for terrorists for life in prison are exorbitant. The death
penalty is "expensive" in the U.S. only because of America`s judicial
system, which allows endless expensive appeals to proceed forever. Israel has
no jury system at all. In any case, these costs can be contained by restricting
the options of appeals of convicted terrorists.
Opponents
of the death penalty in Israel argue that terrorists might resist capture by
fighting to the death and so harm police and soldiers. I say let`s take our
chances. Better the soldiers than the children on the school buses or the women
in the cafes. That is why we have soldiers. I am sure they will cope. And
suicide bombers are not exactly likely to turn more deadly because they face
the death penalty if captured.
One
shouldn’t be shocked that the most vociferous opposition to the death penalty
for terrorists comes from the same Israeli leftists who always put the rights
of Arab murderers ahead of the rights of innocent Jews. These are the same
people who turned most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into cities of refuge
for terrorists, bases for launching murder atrocities against hundreds of
Israelis each year.
