[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 18


ISRAEL:

Israel must have a death penalty for terrorists


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 1000 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 1 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.

(source: 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----Jewish Journal)