Inciting martyrs and inviting murder
The real results of Israel’s proposed death penalty bill
Proponents of National Security Minister Itamar BenGvir’s death penalty for terrorists bill seem to have deluded themselves into believing that the clear-cut human rights violation of capital punishment will reduce terrorist attacks.
This rationale constitutes a grave miscalculation, with potentially lethal consequences for Israel and the Jewish world as a whole. For this reason alone, among many others, Israeli lawmakers must cast a resounding “no” vote against the death penalty bill and instead abolish capital punishment once and for all from the land of Israel.
In a recent op-ed for The Jerusalem Post, Dr. Alex Sternberg and David “Samson” Levin of the far-right Jewish Defense League defended Ben-Gvir’s bill. The crux of their argument rested on the notion that any terrorists who are not executed could become fodder for a future hostage exchange, enabling them to murder again. As they wrote:
“While the death penalty may not deter the jihadist fanatics who have been inculcated from birth to hate the Jews and who desire to die as martyrs, it will certainly guarantee that they will not kill again after a duly deserved execution.”
What the authors failed to address in their opinion piece is the fact that the proposed bill will not only fail to deter terrorism – as academic, peer-reviewed meta-studies have demonstrated – but will, in fact, incite and invite more murderous acts of terror.
As thousands of members of the group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” have maintained, there is ample reason to conclude that capital punishment entices would-be martyrs to attack Israel. A renowned comment regarding the well-established relationship between the death penalty and the desire for martyrdom comes from the 19th-century writer Eliphas Levi. He demonstrated a keen understanding of these dynamics when he wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.”
APPLYING LEVI’S wisdom to modern-day Israel, it becomes clear that a mandatory death sentence for Palestinians who murder Jews will almost certainly increase the number of attacks. Radical Islamist terrorists – like those who perpetrated mass murder on October 7, 2023 – celebrate martyrdom in anticipation of the supposed rewards awaiting them in paradise. They want to die for their cause.
Their preference is 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 – especially if they become celebrities in a world where Israel is hated for how it treats non-Jewish citizens. If the death penalty is instituted, such scenarios would undoubtedly transpire.
Why would Israel want to encourage potential terrorists?
On this purely practical level, the proposed legislation is insane. A far harsher punishment is incarceration, which forces perpetrators to confront what they have done while enduring the constrictions of a maximum-security prison every day. As a former Jewish prison chaplain, I can personally attest to this harsh reality.
The JDL authors also stated that executing terrorists will prevent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps. 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 additional dangers. If the Knesset were to enact it – leading to the unconscionable stain of executions succeeding to darken the moral fabric of Israeli society – antisemitic extremists would assuredly blame all Jews for their state-sponsored killing program, neatly fitting it into their warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “death cult.”
Just as this bill jeopardizes the safety and security of Jews across the globe, it also threatens to permanently mar what remains of Israel’s moral standing among the more than 70% of the world’s nations that have abolished the death penalty in law and practice. In today’s volatile political climate, which already imperils the rule of law in Israel, this issue further normalizes the invocation of state violence and widens the gap between modern Israel and the central Jewish
value of the inviolability of life.
The members of L’chaim have outlined, ad nauseam, multiple additional reasons why Ben-Gvir’s death penalty bill is, by definition, an abomination. L’chaim recently delineated these points in a Hanukkah post, enumerating in detail “8 Reasons to Vote Against the Death Penalty this Hanukkah.” These include the fact that the death penalty violates the human right to life, always constitutes torture, risks executing the innocent, is racist in its application, and – from Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump to Ben-Gvir – has been used as a political tool, particularly during election campaigns.
L’chaim has also illustrated how Jewish tradition renders the death penalty virtually impossible, and how many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing, and lethal injection.
Famed death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel best articulated L’chaim’s stance when he said of capital punishment – in the shadow of the Holocaust – that “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Israeli lawmakers should heed Wiesel’s message and recognize that executions are not the answer today, and never should be.