No, I do not believe in revenge. I believe in justice. But only a true hatred of evil compels us to fight wickedness with every legitimate means at our disposal.[The Petit murders: we must hate evil November 10, 2010]
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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
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Let us read 2 articles from Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach in favor of capital punishment:
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/11/the_petit_murders_and_why_hatred_is_okay.html
The Petit murders: we must hate evil
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
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(William A. Petit Jr., center,
surrounded by members of the the Petit and Hawke family, reacts to the sentence
given to Steven Hayes, not pictured, following jury deliberations Monday in New
Haven, Conn.- AP)
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We
all owe a debt of gratitude to Dr.
William Petit who, in his extreme hour of grief, taught us a valuable
lesson about the nature of evil, forgiveness, and the problem of suffering.
No,
not what you would expect. In speaking of the man convicted of killing his wife
and two daughters, Petit did not deliver an amoral, slobbering speech about
forgiving his wife and daughters' murderer and how all suffering teaches us
some valuable lesson, enriching us in the process. On the contrary, he said
that the murderer deserved
his sentence of death and that the loss of his family would leave a gaping
hole in his heart that would never close.
What
a relief. Finally someone who does not excuse gross evil, who refuses to
forgive monstrous acts of human cruelty, and who says that suffering is not
only not redeeming but leaves a permanent wound that never heals.
The
facts of the case are by now well known. On Nov. 8, 2010, Steven Hayes was
convicted of murdering Petit's wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit and received the death
penalty. The jury found him guilty for his crimes in a horrific home invasion
in Cheshire, Connecticut in 2007 that killed Hawke-Petit and her two daughters.
Hayes reportedly raped and choked Hawke-Petit to death while his accomplice
Joshua Komisarjevsky is accused of sexually assaulting 11-year-old Michaela and
her older sister Hayley who were tied to their beds and raped. Gasoline was
then poured on all three victims and the house was set on fire. The verdict was
unanimous and came on day four of deliberations.
Tuesday,
on the courthouse steps Dr. William Petit, who was savagely beaten in the
attack but survived, said this: "We thank the jury for their diligence and
consideration. We feel that it was an appropriate verdict. There is some
relief, but my family is still gone. It doesn't bring them back. It doesn't
bring back the home that we had."
He
spoke eloquently of how, although some of the jagged edges of his heart would
smooth over slightly with time, the essential hole in his heart and soul would
never close. "It's helpful that justice has been served with an
appropriate verdict," he said. "I don't think there's ever closure. I
think whoever came up with that concept is an imbecile... And I think many of you
know it who have lost a parent or a child or a friend, there's never closure.
There's a hole, you know. The way I've imagined it straight through, it's a
hole with jagged edges and over time the edges may smooth out a little bit, but
the hole in your heart and the hole in your soul is still there. So there's
never closure. I was very much insulted when people asked me last year that if
the death penalty were rendered would that somehow give me closure. Absolutely
not. You know, this is not about revenge."
Over
the past few years many of us have lost our moral bearings on the subject of
evil and human suffering. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters take Jesus'
teachings about forgiving our enemies completely out of context. Jesus said to
forgive your enemies. Your enemy is the guy who steals your parking space. But
God's enemies are men who can rape and slaughter two young women and their
mother and torture them before doing so. In Ecclesiastes King Solomon famously
says "there is a time to love and a time to hate." This is that time.
We must love the Petit family and hate their murderers. Yes, hatred is a valid
emotion when directed at the truly evil.
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No, I do not believe in
revenge. I believe in justice. But only a true hatred of evil compels us to
fight wickedness with every legitimate means at our disposal. – Rabbi Shmuley Boteach [The
Petit murders: we must hate evil November 10, 2010] [PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/rxzpjhv33sfc/1236/no-i-do-not-believe-in-revenge-i-believe-in-justice-but] |
No,
I do not believe in revenge. I believe in justice. But only a true hatred of
evil compels us to fight wickedness with every legitimate means at our
disposal.
When
I lived in England during some of the worst years of the Northern Ireland
troubles I once heard a man whose father was killed by the IRA for no reason
other than he was a Protestant immediately say that as a Christian he is
compelled to love his father's murderers. He said he forgave them for killing
his father. But no human being, even the man's son, can confer such
forgiveness. The act of taking a human life is a crime against God who created
life and endowed it with infinite worth. And such acts of misguided magnanimity
and forgiveness make a mockery of human love and a shambles of human justice.
Murder in cold blood dare not be forgiven. Murderers who have erased the image
of God from their countenance through savage acts of brutality have removed
themselves from the human family. They are not our brothers and we are under no
obligation to love them. Indeed, any love we have in our hearts must be
directed at the victims of violence rather than at their culprits.
Yes,
Jesus said 'turn the other cheek.' But is anyone so morally lost as to suggest
that he meant if someone rapes your wife, give him your daughter to rape as
well? Of course, what Jesus meant was to forgive the petty slights that people
enact against you. If a friend pretends not to notice you at a party, forgive
them. If your husband loses his temper and yells, yes he must apologize. But be
quick to forgive. But Jesus never meant that we should not dedicate ourselves
to fighting evil.
Psalm
97 makes it clear. "Let those who love the Lord hate evil." It's
repeated again in Proverbs Chap 8: "The fear of the Lord is to hate
evil." Yes, hatred has its place, but only under a single condition that
was met in the terrible Petit murders: the human confrontation with extreme
evil.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach heads This World: The Values
Network, an organization dedicated to promoting universal Jewish values to heal
America. He has just published a book on Jewish spirituality for non-Jews
called Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life. Follow him on Twitter
@RabbiShmuley.
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach | November 10, 2010; 11:50 AM ET
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.jewishjournal.com/rabbi_shmuley/item/israel_must_have_a_death_penalty_for_terrorists_20111018
October
18, 2011
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Israel must have a death penalty for terrorists
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A vehicle carrying Gilad Shalit arrives at the northern village of
Mitzpe Hila on Oct. 18. Photo by REUTERS/Nir Elias
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No Jew,
and indeed no decent person in whom there beats a human heart, could fail to be
moved to tears by the reunion of Gilad Shalit and his family in Israel. Looking
pale from years of being held in a cell and deprived of sunlight, and extremely
shy due to years of being denied virtually all human contact, Israel welcomed
home a hero for whom they had traded one thousand murderers, terrorists, and
criminals committed to its destruction to keep true to its promise, that no
soldier is ever forgotten or left behind.
As Hamas
and the Palestinians ululated and celebrated the return to their society of
killers who had taken the lives of so many innocent men, women and children
guilty of no other sin than going about their daily business, Israel cheered at
the restoration of one of its sons who was kidnapped while trying to protect
these innocent lives. The conflicting values systems of the two opposing camps
– one dedicated to the life and the other, tragically, having been overtaken
for decades by a culture of death – could not have been draw in more stark
terms than watching our Palestinian brothers and sisters welcoming terrorists
home with parades while Israel reembraced a soldier whose first words to the
world media, after having been treated like a caged animal for five years, were
his hopes for lasting peace. It also goes without saying that when Israel is
prepared to trade a thousand predators for one lonely soldier it is because of
Israel’s commitment to the infinite value of human life.
Still,
the question remains whether the deal was worth it. Much comment has been made
both pro and con, so I will here limit myself to a different angle of the story
entirely, one that would obviate the need to trade killers for captured
soldiers in the future. It is high time that Israel finally instituted a death
penalty for terrorists. In the United States Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 160
people in Oklahoma in April, 1995, was dispatched after a fair trial and an
appeal with no public outcry whatsoever. No man who takes that many lives may
be permitted to live. So why would Israel lock up the most rancid, heartless,
and cold-blooded mass murderers in its jails just so that they can serve as a
lure for Israelis to be kidnapped in order that these killers be paroled?
A very
partial of terrorists now released by Israel, and who were previously fed three
warm meals a day in an Israeli prison for years, includes Ibrahim Jundiya, who
was serving multiple life sentences for carrying out an attack that killed 12
people and wounded 50. There is Amina Mona, an accomplice to the murder of
16-year-old Ofir Rachum. She lured him over the internet to a meeting where
terrorists were waiting to kill him. Jihad Yaghmur and Yehia Sanwar were
involved in the abduction and murder of Nachshon Wachsman which also led to the
murder of Matkal Unit member, Nir Poraz, head of the rescue mission sent to
save him. I am an acquaintance of Nachson’s mother and can only imagine her
pain at seeing her son’s killers celebrated as returning conquerors.
Also
released are Ahlam Tamimi, the 20-year-old student accomplice to the Sbarros
restaurant bombing in 2001 that left fifteen dead and 130 wounded, Aziz Salha
who was famously photographed displaying his bloodied hands for the mob crowd
below after beating an Israeli soldier to death, and Nasser Yataima who planned
the 2002 Passover massacre that killed 30 and wounded 140.
The
question this despicable list of the murderers being released begs is this: why
were they still alive in the first place? Why were they not given fair and
impartial trials and the right to appeal, and if found guilty of murder and
especially mass murder, executed by the State?
Some will
argue that this will only invite the Arab terror organizations to execute the
Israeli prisoners they hold. It is therefore worth recalling that this is what
the Palestinian terror organizations do overwhelmingly anyway and that Gilad
Shalit is the first living soldier to be returned to Israel in more than a
quarter century. In July, 2008, Israel arranged another prisoner exchange in
order to obtain the release of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured two
years earlier, sparking Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, only to tragically
discover they had been dead all along.
Others,
especially Europeans, will argue that the death penalty is cruel and Israel is
more humane for banning it. I disagree. While there is a robust debate here in
the United States related to the death penalty over individual acts of murder,
there should be no such debate whatsoever when it comes to premeditated mass
murder and terrorism. The Europeans powers like Britain and France participated
in the execution of Nazi leaders in the Nuremberg trials of 1945-1946, with no
compunction whatsoever in mandating state-sponsored executions of mass
murderers. Indeed, I argue that it is cruel and unusual punishment against the
families of Israel’s terror victims to leave these terrorists alive in Israeli
prisons with the families not knowing day to day if they will even serve out
their sentences should another Israeli soldier fall into captive hands. The
families deserve closure.
For those
who argue that if Israel puts its terrorists to death there will be nothing
left to bargain with should an Israeli soldier or citizen become captive, I respond
that other deals can always be made, be it with money, international pressure,
or the exchange of Arab prisoners who are not guilty of terrorism.
And it’s
not as if Israel has no precedent in taking the life of a mass murderer, having
put to death one abominable soul, the architect of the holocaust itself, Adolph
Eichmann, at midnight in a Ramla prison on May 31, 1962. Eichmann’s body was
then cremated and his ashes polluting the Mediterranean a day later beyond
Israel’s territorial waters. And the last words of one of the most wicked
monsters of all time? “I die believing in God.” Let’s make sure that others
like him whose crimes make a mockery of G-d meet the same end.
Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach has just published “Ten Conversations You Need to Have with
Yourself” (Wiley) and in December will publish “Kosher Jesus” (Gefen). He is in
the midst of creating the Global Institute for Values Education (GIVE). Follow
him on his website www.shmuley.com and on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
©
Copyright 2011 Tribe Media Corp.
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