Protesting Veiled Vengeance

On February 27th, in what was the latest installment in the growing groundswell of Israeli and Jewish protest against the death penalty worldwide, Israeli citizens living across Europe who “refuse to stay silent in the face of state-sanctioned executions” demonstrated in front of Israeli embassies in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Amsterdam. Some of them held up signs featuring Jewish death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel’s famous quote asserting: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Others with loudspeakers waved placards featuring the Eitz Hayim – the Tree of Life – logo of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” a group comprising thousands of members in Israel and throughout the Diaspora. They called upon the European Union to intervene and uphold its commitment to the abolition of the death penalty.

As L’chaim members recently outlined in a Purim-themed essay, multiple factors motivate such protestors against capital punishment in Israel –  or anywhere. One such reason is recognizing what lies at the core of the death penalty: vengeance. That insidious menace that has plagued humanity since time immemorial merits particular focus, now more than ever, as the contentious debate over this proposed legislation continues in the Knesset.

Many mask the centrality of vengeful bloodlust in language of “proportional justice,” a term that Maoz Druskin invoked in his recent Times of Israel op-ed,  “The Death Penalty in Israel: Terror Must Have a Cost.” An even more common veil for capital revenge is the phrase “retributive justice.” This term recently reared its head in an op-ed entitled “Israel should enact the Ben-Gvir death penalty law.” Author Alex Sternberg wrote that this legislation “is motivated by aims such as deterrence, avoiding prisoner exchanges, retributive justice, and reinforcing national security messaging.” Sternberg subsequently admitted that “there is little evidence, however, that executing terrorists deters others.” Regarding the other points on Sternberg’s list, this writer has written extensively in this publication and elsewhere about why such a bill would only further endanger Israelis and how, instead of “reinforcing national security messaging,” it actually would increase national security threats against Jews everywhere. Removing these erroneous fallacies from the equation leaves only one of Sternberg’s cited factors with which to contend: retributive justice. Whether “proportional” or “retributive,” any form of “justice” that one invokes regarding the death penalty is, without fail, ultimately a justification for revenge.

Vengeance Fails to Bring Closure

Regarding vengeance, Sternberg writes that “retributive justice offers victims’ families a sense of justice by affirming the worth of the victims’ lives. Since murder is a more severe crime than those that do not involve loss of life, the punishment should be proportionally harsher.” On social media, where writers are less inhibited than an op-ed would permit, underlying feelings become more transparent. In response to one of my recent Facebook posts opposing the death penalty, comments quickly became unhinged. “If I were in charge,” said one, “the method of execution would be slow torture or death.” “Put it on television and make it a public spectacle,” wrote another, to which a third responded, “desecrate their dead bodies. Bury them in pig blood and slaughtered pigs.” Each of these comments yielded many positive replies from other readers.

Putting aside the obviously grotesque nature of these outbursts, a tragic byproduct of this kind of reactive shortsightedness is the tendency to overlook how more killing invariably fails to bring closure. Regarding the death penalty, studies reveal that the drive for lethal retribution actually interferes with the ability to move forward. The hundreds of murder victim family members that comprise the inspiring death penalty abolitionist group Journey of Hope: From Violence to Healing offer powerful testaments to this fact. They regularly devote themselves to public education about the needs of crime victims, and specifically the needs of family members of murder victims. By centering the voices of those who have lost loved ones to murder, Journey of Hope provides a unique perspective and much-needed voice in the effort to abolish the death penalty and replace it with effective, constructive solutions that build upon restorative justice practices.

The Shadow of the Shoah

It is essential to state that the thousands of Israeli and Diaspora Jews who comprise the group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” – which this writer co-founded – would never deign to speak for victims of the unimaginable terror that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th. As a hospital chaplain myself, I regularly counsel mourners that they should feel permission to experience the whole gamut of human emotion while grieving, including rage, and even the desire for vengeance where applicable. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position. If I myself were to lose a loved one to murder, or if my own children were brutally ripped away like 9-month-old baby Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas, Z’L, and countless others on Oct. 7th, I could very well find myself advocating for the execution of my loved one’s killers, just as some of the loved ones of terrorist murder and rape victims do now. A civilized society has a responsibility to protect and honor all such mourners, while also upholding the most basic human rights upon which this world stands. Fundamental to these, of course, is the right to life itself.

And yet, I still can speak as someone who once did unwittingly operate under revenge’s cunning spell. As a third-generation Holocaust survivor, I used to experience the natural desire for vengeance against those who murdered my ancestors in cold blood. For years, that overpowering feeling contributed to my support of capital punishment. If I could not carry out that reprisal with my own hands, then I felt the state should do so by proxy against other murderers. “They should take ‘em out back and shoot ‘em,” some family suggested; “eye for an eye,” the Torah reinforced.

I was not alone among Jews in the wake of the Shoah who harbored such feelings. Many certainly overcame rage and the urge for retribution, notably death penalty abolitionists like Elie Wiesel, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Eva Mozes Kor. Other survivors and descendants like me held on to the pain and anger that grew from direct and intergenerational trauma.

Unveiling Vengeance on Death Row

My vengeful impulse shifted once I started working as a Jewish prison chaplain in Canada with individuals whose murder convictions would have rendered them eligible for execution in certain United States jurisdictions. I saw firsthand how the horrors of life imprisonment constituted punishment enough for such individuals. What I experienced certainly was not the lavish “prison war college” that Sternberg describes in his essay. If what I witnessed in Canadian prisons was harsh, I can only imagine what a life sentence means in the facilities of the Israel Prison Service, where it is well-documented that Palestinians in Israeli jails face “conditions unfit for human beings,’

My experiences as a prison chaplain unveiled my unconscious bias toward retribution via execution, and I began to see that desire more clearly for what it was: an understandable wish for payback. In part to help break the cycle of violence into which I was born—and that I had been inadvertently perpetuating—I decided to launch into activism for death penalty abolition.

Since then, as an ordained cantor, chaplain, and co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” I have directly communicated for years with scores of condemned Americans— many now executed—as well as some of their victims’ loved ones. I have experienced the impact of government policies that shroud the collective appetite for vengeance in the form of psychologically and physically torturous state-sponsored executions. This pattern invariably repeats, even when murder victims’ family members expressly call for mercy. Political leaders submit to the will of death penalty advocates, many of whom – like the social media commentators above – harbor the mentality of “the more suffering, the better,” even when execution methods constitute unconscionable Nazi legacies.

As Israelis recently protesting across Europe know all too well, Jews around the world cannot let this pattern repeat on our watch. The current death penalty bill in the Knesset must not be permitted to pass.

The cycles of violence and vengeance must – once and for all – end.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)