Eight Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty This Hanukkah
Photo by Gary Sankary
To the Esteemed Members of the Knesset,
For each of the eight nights of Hanukkah this year, we, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” invite you to consider these eight facts (plus one for the Shammash – Helper candle) about capital punishment as we call upon you to vote against the death penalty bill currently before you for non-Jewish convicted terrorists. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather some points to keep in mind as you weigh the sacred and lethal decision now before you. May these points of light help illuminate your consciences:
1) The death penalty will increase – not decrease – terrorist attacks.
First and foremost, the myth that killing captured Hamas terrorists will save Israeli lives is patently false. Instead, it would only create more shahids – “martyrs” – among Israel’s enemies. As 19th-century philosopher Eliphas Levi famously wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.” A mandatory death sentence for Palestinians who murder Jews will almost certainly increase the number of terrorist attacks. Why would Israel want to encourage potential terrorists? On a purely practical level, this proposed legislation is insane.
2) The death penalty risks executing the innocent.
There is rightfully no tolerance for the execution of an individual who is innocent of an alleged capital crime. The reputable Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) writes that, given the fallibility of human judgment, there has always been the danger that an execution could result in the killing of an innocent person. Since 1973 in the United States, over 200 death-row prisoners have been exonerated of the charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row. (This includes one individual, Elwood Jones, whose exoneration from Ohio Death Row became news while we are writing this very letter.) DPIC adds the following grim statistics about these human beings, which speak for themselves:
“These individuals have collectively spent 2,621 years in harsh prison conditions for crimes they did not commit. On average, death row exonerees spent 13 years under the sentence of death before their exonerations, with some individuals spending more than 40 years fighting to prove their innocence. 65% of exonerees are people of color, and of them, 54% are Black, highlighting systemic racial disparities. Florida has the highest number of death row exonerations of any state (30), followed by Illinois (22) and Texas (18).”
How many more innocent individuals must be released before any society – including Israel – recognizes the fallibility of any human-crafted system of justice and stops the possibility of executing an innocent human being?
Jewish tradition, to be sure, forbids the execution of someone where there is any level of doubt about guilt or fairness. It is for this very reason that rabbinic tradition placed prodigious safeguards to ensure that no innocent person was put to death. Arguably, the most famous comment comes from one of the most renowned Jewish sages: the Rambam, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204). Maimonides, as he is often called, was a Sephardic Jewish physician and philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. As he famously wrote of capital punishment in Sefer HaMitzvot, Prohibition 290:
“It is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.”
Maimonides’s charge for the protection of the innocent must inform the decision now before you in the Knesset.
Image: The grave of George Stinney, Jr., a boy executed in 1944 and exonerated in 2014. South Carolina recently has added the firing squad to its approved methods of executions. How many more innocent deaths will it take? (Source: South Carolina Department of Archives and History)
3) Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible.
Speaking of Jewish tradition, let there be no doubt: the safeguards that traditional Jewish law established rendered capital punishment essentially impossible to carry out. For murders to be eligible for death, two eyewitnesses needed to have caught them in the act and warned them ahead of time that their action would result in the death penalty. Many of the most powerful and brilliant rabbinic voices reflect this impossible standard. Let us recall the words of some of the loftiest figures among them: Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah, Rabbi Tarfon, and Rabbi Akiva, as found in the Talmud:
“A Sanhedrin [Rabbinic court] that affects an execution once in seven years is branded a destructive tribunal. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: once in 70 years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: Were we members of a Sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death.[Thereupon] Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel remarked, they would also multiply shedders of blood in Israel!” (Mishnah, Makkot 7a)
Indeed, there were dissenters. — like Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel above — who were pro-death, citing similar deterrence factors and other now antiquated notions of “justice.” Posterity can forgive them for their views, which reflected the understanding of their times, including in the realm of deterrence.
4) The death penalty does not cause “deterrence.”
Recent meta-studies have concluded that when it comes to deterrence, there is no demonstrable link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates. Advocates for death invoke deterrence as a veil for what truly underlies the desire for executions: vengeance.
5) The death penalty is racist.
Applying different standards to Jewish and non-Jewish terrorists is inherently racist. This undeniable racist implementation in Israel is reminiscent of the current reality in the United States, where racial bias against defendants of color and in favor of white victims has a strong effect on who is capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed. Those convicted of murdering white victims are much more likely to be given the death sentence. Capital punishment has long come under scrutiny for being racially biased. Earlier in the twentieth century, when it was applied for the crime of rape, 89 percent of the executions involved black defendants, most for the rape of a white woman. In the modern era, when executions have been carried out exclusively for murder, 75 percent of the cases involve the murder of white victims, even though about half of all homicide victims in America are black.
A bias towards white-victim cases has been found in almost all of the sophisticated studies exploring this area over many years. These studies typically control for other variables in the cases studied, such as the number of victims or the brutality of the crime, and still found that defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death if they killed a white person.
A similar trend will no doubt develop in Israel in cases involving Jewish versus non-Jewish victims.
6) The death penalty often results in physical torture, and always is psychological torture for individuals counting down to their execution day. There is no humane way to execute human beings against their will.
The death penalty is in direct violation of Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Our correspondence with the Jewish and non-Jewish condemned reveals this. Telling a human being the date and time on which she or he is to be put to death is a level of inhumanity and torture without comparison in this world. Albert Camus is another individual who witnessed this firsthand. As early as 1957, in his book Reflections on the Guillotine, he concluded:
“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
7) Many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing, and lethal injection.
The execution methods of lethal injection, gassing, and the firing squadare unquestionable and unconscionable direct Nazi legacies. This fact makes capital punishment particularly anathema for L’chaim members who descend directly from Holocaust victims and survivors. More than most people, we know that one cannot conflate executions with the singularly horrific genocide of the Shoah. And yet, the shadow of the Holocaust is inextricably linked to our firm rejection of the death penalty in all cases, including for convicted Hamas terrorists, as well as the Washington, DC, Israeli Embassy and the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shooters.
The most common form of execution that the US federal government and multiple states employ is lethal injection, and it is precisely this method that Israel now seeks to use for state killings. Most people do not realize that lethal injection is a direct Nazi legacy, first implemented in human history by the Third Reich as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol used to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Dr. Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, devised that program. This abject abomination is the legacy that this death penalty bill would perpetuate.
Image: Adolf Hitler’s authorization for the euthanasia program (Aktion/Operation T4), signed in October, 1939, but dated September 1, 1939. The Nazis were the first to implement lethal injection, which the Knesset now is debating to use as Israel’s execution method of choice. (National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, public domain)
L’chaim’s abolitionist position applies as well to Israel’s only other execution, that of infamous Nazi mass murderer Adolph Eichmann in 1962. L’chaim carries the torch of renowned Hebrew university philosophers Samuel Hugo Bergmann and Nathan Rotenstreich, scholar of Kabbalah Gershom Scholem, and Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber, all of whom opposed Eichmann’s state killing, which Buber called a great “mistake.” Other Holocaust survivors themselves, such as Nobel-prize-winning author Nelly Sachs, voiced strident opposition to Eichmann’s execution.
Image: Headlines of the June 5, 1962 New York Times article about Martin Buber’s objections to the execution of Nazi perpetrator Adolph Eichmann.
8) From Adolph Hitler to Trump to Ben Gvir, the death penalty is used as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns.
After his study of Adolph Hitler’s use of executions for political gains, Donald Trump went on an unprecedented federal execution spree that led to the deaths of thirteen inmates toward the end of his first term as president in the hope of gaining popularity for future elections. Now, his second term, he has directly called for the execution of his political opponents. Meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, as he eyes his political future, has already executed 18 individuals and will ensure the state’s killing of the nineteenth human being on the fifth night of Hanukkah this year. National Security Minister Itamar Ben G’vir’s recent political act of sporting a noose-shaped lapel pin glorified killing and sanctified revenge in a manner that is reminiscent of Machiavellian politicians like Hitler, Trump, and DeSantis and other tyrants throughout the ages. Executions inevitably become a political tool, creating a recipe for disaster for any so-called “civilized” society.
9) For the Shammash – the 9th Helper Candle: The death penaltyviolates the human right to life.
As outlined in the Third Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.”Over 70% of nations have realized this and abolished the death penalty in law or practice. It is time for Israel to join civilized nations on this crucial issue. Let this light of life be the value that, like the Shammash, ignites all eight other lights of reason regarding the death penalty.
Image: A list of some enlightened figures throughout history, as well as current leaders, who are death penalty abolitionists.
On this Hanukkah, we ask that you recall the words of Elie Wiesel, whose views encapsulated the stance of L’chaim’s members. When quesrioned about his feelings on capital punishment, Wiesel resolutely stated, “Death is not the answer.” By the end of his life, Wiesel publicly said that he madeno exception to this rule, stating: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.”
Twenty-first-century Judaism must hold by the red line that Wiesel set forth. It cannot lower itself to the status of enemies such as Hamas, Iran, and Yemen by violating its moral obligations and ethical standards and engaging in state-sponsored killings of defenseless prisoners. With Wiesel’s neshama – spirit – in mind and heart, and on behalf of all L’chaim members, we respectfully implore you to join civilized humanity and abolish the death penalty once and for all. The first step toward doing so is voting against the abject abomination that is the death penalty bill before you now.
Two Hanukkahs ago, L’chaim released out interview with with Sister Helen Prejean, famed author of Dead Man Walking. Sister Helen thanked us for keeping the torch of Elie Wiesel lit with the light of abolition. May you find it in your hearts to do the same this season as we light the Hanukkah candles, and as you ponder this ultimately Divine power of creating – and extinguishing – the light of life.
L’chaim!
A version of this column first appeared in the Times of Israel.
The post Eight Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty This Hanukkah appeared first on CounterPunch.org.