L’chaim’s Statement on Live-Streamed American Firing Squad Execution at Hanukkah

The thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” from across the USA, Israel, and the world roundly denounce the announcement of a televised and live-streamed firing squad execution slated to take place the day before Hanukkah this year. Speaking for U.S. President and convicted felon Donald J. Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, will be a public event. A War Department official later confirmed the execution will be livestreamed from Fort Hood, Texas. This veritable nightmare would mark the first US military execution in more than 60 years. It is set to take place at 1 pm on Thursday, 3 December, just one day before the start of the Jewish Festival of Lights: Hanukkah.

Hasan opened fire at a medical processing center on the Texas base on 5 November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more. A military jury sentenced him to death in 2013, and he has been held at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas ever since. He exhausted his appeals last year, allowing Donald Trump to approve the sentence this week. That decision came on a recommendation from Hegseth, who stated of Hasan: “It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

Hegseth’s implied reference to the deterrence delusion that abounds in popular culture regarding the death penalty is one of many reasons why this development marks an insane and dangerous moment for America. L’chaim has publicly stated on multiple occasions how the use of a firing squad itself, like lethal injection and gassing to death, is a Nazi legacy and ghastly trigger, indeed, for Jews everywhere in the wake of the Holocaust. The decision to do so publicly only further connects the United States to other regimes, such as the Third Reich, that have glorified death and wielded executions as a political tool. It is a barbaric spectacle that seems more befitting of the ancient Roman Colosseum where countless Jewish sages were publicly executed, or open-air stadiums in Iran and other countries where state murder is celebrated and wielded as a political tool.

To carry out this abject abomination on the eve of the joyous holiday of Hanukkah across the Jewish world is a slap in the face of life-affirming Jews everywhere. There can be no doubt that this holiday was born of violence and war in Israel millennia ago. Yet, just as Judaism has evolved over the centuries, so too has Hanukkah, which has become the Festival of Lights, focusing on the story of a tiny amount of oil that miraculously lasted long enough to keep the Temple’s lamp lit for eight days and nights. L’chaim members celebrate Judaism’s evolution into the spiritual/cultural tradition that we practice today: a 21st-century Judaism that marches for life and peace and absolutely rejects the death penalty without exception in all forms. The knowledge that the United States government will be extinguishing that proverbial light by mimicking the Angel of Death for all the world to see just before we kindle the first candle of the Hanukkiah is incomprehensible and nauseating. One can only imagine what might have been the reaction of death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel, Z’L (1928-2016), who likened state killings to the very same Malakh HaMavet (Angel of Death) when he stated:

“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.”

It is not a coincidence that Trump and Hegseth announced this macabre, maniacal public display of death worship on this week of all weeks. It comes on the heels of Tennessee’s shameful torture and botched execution of Christa Pike. It is intended to represent a doubling down on the policy of state murder for any whose faith in the “machinery of death” might have been shaken by her suffering. Through this timing, it leaves no doubt where the current American regime stands when it comes to concern for the human right to life. Moreover, for the Jewish world, the trauma of the timing is exacerbated by the fact that it comes during the same week as the third anniversary of the terrorist massacre of October 7th, 2023, in Israel, a country whose own government dishonored that date by distributing noose-themed pins to schoolchildren just days prior. It is also not lost on abolitionists across the globe that this announcement comes just two days before World Day Against the Death Penalty, when Texas executed L’chaim’s longtime Jewish client Jedidiah Murphy in 2023, just days after October 7th.

L’chaim often concludes its public statements by invoking another statement by its founder in spirit, Elie Wiesel, who famously said of capital punishment “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Yet, there are some developments that seem so monstrous as to be beyond words. Hegseth’s latest fiasco is certainly one of them. Countless individuals have invoked the popular misunderstanding of the Torah’s infamous “eye for an eye” verse to justify why they look forward to “getting popcorn” to watch this “event.” For them, the fact that the God of the Bible commands the death penalty, even for insulting one’s parents, permits them to glorify death. In response, it would seem more appropriate, then, to cite the poignant reply of the Biblical Job to God’s invocation of Divine power to justify the suffering and death that the Divine allowed Job and his family to endure. As per the translation of Jack Miles in his Pulitzer Prize-winning God: A Biography, an unwavering, resolute Job says the following to God:

“Look, I am of no account. What can I tell you?

My hand is on my mouth.

I have already spoken once: I will not harp.

Why go on? I have nothing to add. (40: 4-5)

And as for Trump and Hegseth, and all those who support them, it would seem best to respond with Job’s final statement to God to convey L’chaim’s dire concern for the fate of America moving forward from this ominous moment in the annals of U.S. history:

“Word of you had reached my ears,

but now that my eyes have seen you,

I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay.” (42: 2-6)

Woe to us all, indeed, if this exhibition marks the start of the next chapter of the American story. If readers agree, please join us in signing and sharing this petition against all federal and military executions in the United States.

May the abiding neshamot/spirits of all the murder victims of Nidal Hasam, and in all cases, be loving guides for us all.

May their loved ones be comforted among all the mourners of the world.

May no more blood be shed in their sacred names.

May the cycles of violence and killings end.

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Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

Jewish Prison Chaplain

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action