Ben Gvir’s Latest Illegal Stunt Mocks World Day Against the Death Penalty

This past Sunday morning, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir once again published additional footage from inside a prison. Ben-Gvir elected to do so after Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara explicitly issued an instruction to Israel Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi not to allow the National Security Minister to enter prisons and document meetings with terrorists and prisoners for election propaganda purposes. For this latest political stunt, the footage that Ben-Gvir released shows a meeting he held roughly one month ago with terrorists who, he claims, belonged to one of the cells that planned to assassinate him and harm members of his family.

​That footage, filmed during a visit by the minister to a prison in southern Israel, shows Ben-Gvir threatening to work toward that individual’s execution, stating, “You picked the wrong minister. I’m not afraid of you, nor of a thousand others like you. And with God’s help, we’ll have you executed – and someone like you, you deserve to die, you deserve to die. You should be killed by hanging, under the death penalty.” On cue, later on Sunday, Central Elections Committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Justice Noam Sohlberg issued an interim order directing Ben-Gvir and the Otzma Yehudit faction to remove the video from all their social-media accounts immediately, pending a further decision.

​Yet the damage was already done.

​Beyond the inherent danger of a minister blatantly ignoring his orders for personal gain, this spectacle’s propping up of the notion of execution only further threatens the safety of Israel. It is well-known that the death penalty only creates more martyrs. 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 basic human dynamics when he wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.” History has proven this time and again.

Antisemitic extremists will assuredly blame all Jews for the execution of their enemies. They will conveniently fold Ben-Gvir’s death advocacy into the narrative into which they have lumped those who advocate for capital punishment in Israel. It will neatly fit into a warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “Death Cult.”

​​Just as advocating for executions in Israel jeopardizes the safety and security of Jews across the globe in this way, it also threatens to permanently mar what remains of Israel’s moral standing among the vast majority of nations that have abolished the death penalty in law and practice. In the highly volatile political climate that now imperils the rule of law in Israel, this issue further normalizes the invocation of state violence. It widens the gap between modern-day Israel and the central Jewish value of life’s inviolability.

Ben Gvir’s timing in releasing this post is particularly troubling given another poignant synchronicity that Ben-Gvir likely knew about. His charade came directly on the heels of World Day Against the Death Penalty, observed globally on October 10th by millions worldwide, including well over seventy percent of nations that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. On the eve of that solemn occasion, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” from across Israel, the United States, and the world republished an account of L’chaim’s client Jedidiah Murphy, the Jewish individual on Texas’ Death Row that the Lone Star State executed on that same date in 2023. That publication first appeared in Moment Magazine on August 2, 2023, two months before Jedidiah’s state murder. L’chaim has written elsewhere about Jedidiah’s sincere teshuvah/repentance for his crime and his praying for Israel in his last message to us after news of the October 7th massacre that occurred just three days before his execution.

​World Day Against the Death Penalty comes at a fraught moment this year, a fact Ben-Gvir was likely quite aware of when releasing this footage. As expected, it once again fell on the heels of October 7th in Israel, a country whose own government dishonored that date earlier this week by distributing noose-themed pins to schoolchildren just days prior. It also arrived two days after the United States government announced its intentions of live-streaming a public firing squad execution the day before Hanukkah. Finally, this commemorative day came only a week after Tennessee’s shameful torture and botched execution of Christa Pike, who has corresponded with L’chaim for years after having become a changed person in prison, and who thanked L’chaim members for their prayers after her seemingly miraculously survival. Ben G’vir no doubt realized the “bad press” that the death penalty was receiving internationally in light of these developments and sought to bolster his sadistic death wish and cause célèbre of executions.

​The co-founder of Moment Magazine, which published Jedidiah’s story ahead of World Day Against the Death Penalty, was death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel, z’l (1928-2016), who famously said of capital punishment: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Ben G’vir would do well to recall Professor Wiesel’s words as he continues his unhinged campaign promulgating the cycle of violence, vengeance, and killing in Israel.

​Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

Jewish Prison Chaplain

Co-Founder: L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action