Netanyahu’s Attempt to Water Down Death Penalty Bill is Shamefully Inadequate

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent shameful attempt to soften the wording of the controversial bill to legislate the death penalty for terror convicts would do nothing to change the catastrophic potential impact of this legislation, if enacted. According to a Saturday report, Netanyahu is considering such mitigation in response to fears of international legal repercussions and domestic legal challenges.

Citing sources familiar with the discussions, Ynet news reported that Netanyahu’s aides approached National Security Minister – and primary death penalty bill advocate – Itamar Ben Gvir in recent days to urge revisions to the proposal currently being advanced by the Knesset. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office argued that the draft in its present form is more severe than capital punishment standards in the United States, which could expose Israel to diplomatic pressure and legal scrutiny abroad. According to the report, the National Security Council, the Shin Bet security agency, and the Foreign Ministry are all in favor of Netanyahu’s demand to amend the bill. During committee deliberations, the legal advisors warned of potential constitutional barriers stemming from concerns about the bill’s language.

The proposed changes are entirely inadequate. Among them is the removal of a clause mandating the death penalty for certain terrorism offenses without judicial discretion. Netanyahu is pushing to allow judges to choose between capital punishment and life imprisonment, and also seeks to introduce a right of appeal on sentencing, aligning the law with Israel’s international legal commitments.

Other issues with the bill include its application to Palestinians under Israeli military rule in the West Bank and conflict with international treaties to which Israel is a signatory. Another disputed provision would apply the death penalty differently depending on the victims’ citizenship status. Netanyahu has pushed to delete this clause to avoid accusations of discrimination, particularly in cases of Jewish terrorism against Palestinians. Finally, Netanyahu’s legal team also said that the offense detailed in the bill is far too vague, which could make it difficult to interpret in practice.

All of these attempts to water down, rather than block, Ben Gvir’s judicial death penalty bill will hardly impact the massive moral hole that this veritable danse macabre has dug for Israel and all the Jewish world. None of the revisions comes close to meeting the immense international pressure that Israel faces to abolish the death penalty altogether. Netanyahu’s attempts to dilute the bill amount to nothing more than political posturing to make him seem to offer a compromise between far-right religious and nationalist fanaticism and sanity. They constitute a shameless means of appeasement for the bloodlust that Ben Gvir has embraced as part of a Machiavellian, megalomaniacal power grab in an election year for both politicians.

The group “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty,” of which I am the co-founder, has the right and the obligation to sound the alarm over this bill. Founded in 2020, L’chaim includes thousands of members in Israel and in the Diaspora who realize that the collective deterrence delusion that sustains this racist bill in the minds of so many proponents blinds them to the most imminent peril this legislation poses. Not only will it fail to deter ter­ror­ists –  and betray Jewish values by cheapening life – but it will, in fact, incite and invite more mur­der­ous acts of ter­ror. No invocation of the deterrence delusion – not even by the Shin Bet – can erase the reality that the death penalty will doom Israel to an ultimately catastrophic, self-destructive path that will endanger all the Jewish world.

There are other manifold reas­ons why this death pen­alty bill is, by defin­i­tion, an abom­in­a­tion that, if enacted, would spell catastrophe for Israeli society and Jews everywhere. Those factors include the unmistakable truths that the death pen­alty viol­ates the human right to life, always con­sti­tutes tor­ture, risks execut­ing the inno­cent, would traumatize Israeli executioners, 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.

It is for sound reasons that Jew­ish tra­di­tion renders the death pen­alty vir­tu­ally impossible to carry out. In the wake of the events of the Holocaust, it especially behooves Jews everywhere to remember that many exe­cu­tion meth­ods are dir­ect Nazi legacies, includ­ing fir­ing squad, gass­ing, and lethal injec­tion. Famed death pen­alty abol­i­tion­ist Elie Wiesel best artic­u­lated the stance of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” when he famously said of cap­ital pun­ish­ment that – in the shadow of the Holo­caust – “death should never be the answer in a civ­il­ized soci­ety.”  Israeli law­makers should heed Wiesel’s mes­sage and recog­nize that the unnecessary, egregious trauma of imposing exe­cu­tions is not the answer in Israel today, and never should be – anywhere.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action