A Bullet To The Nape Of The Neck

In 1995, I was Israel’s ambassador to the Baltic countries when Boris Dekainidze, a 32-year-old Jew who led the Vilnius Brigade, was found guilty of ordering the murder of an investigative journalist and was executed by a shot to the nape of his neck. He was the last person to be executed in Lithuania, which was then adjusting its legal standards to those of democratic Europe.

Some twenty years later, I still wondered if and how I should have acted to save his life. In my memoir, I wrote: “He is buried in the Vilnius Jewish cemetery, not far from the Vilna Ga’on, a famous eighteenth century sage. When I took guests to the rabbi’s grave, I often thought of the other. Did his Jewishness give me any special responsibility to try to halt his sentence?”

The family had hired a Vilnius-born Israeli lawyer to pressure Lithuania, diplomats do not decide independently on matters of principle, certainly not on how to act regarding internal matters in the countries where they serve and Dekainidze was no saint. But our sources teach us the value of saving even one life – the sanctity of human life is our moral compass. Should I have done something? If so, what?

Another decade passed, and this forgotten episode reappeared in my mind when the bodies of six hostages who were murdered by Hamas bullets to the napes of their necks were retrieved from Gaza tunnels. They are: Hersh Goldberg-Polin (23), Eden Yerushalmi (24), Ori Danino (25), Alex Lobanov (32), Almog Sarusi (27) and Carmel Gat (40).

Like many others, my initial response when hearing about the decision to remain in the Philadelphi Corridor was “but this is a death sentence!”. Reports of the cabinet meeting which took that decision without any substantive discussion were shocking. Who was against? Only the Minister of Defense, a man whose adult life has been dedicated to Israel’s security. Instead of being a rubber stamp for the prime minister, a man whom all polls indicate is overwhelmingly distrusted by the public, perhaps cabinet members should have paid a little attention to the learned opinion of Yoav Gallant?

Dear ministers, you who have it in your hands to seal fates – what did you think when you heard about the hostages’ murders? How do you feel when you watch the funerals? Do you even bother to watch them? Do you regret your vote? Might you try to change matters, before it is too late? Or do you view the victims as collateral damage to the continuing existence of the coalition and the sectorial interests it serves?

I am no saint. But words I wrote twenty years after the execution of Boris Dekainidze, a criminal towards whom I had no official responsibility except a shared nationality, show that his death was a small but ongoing stain on my conscience. And you, ministers of Israel, do your consciences speak to you? What do they say?