The debate over Israel’s death penalty bill has reignited the question of the right of non-Israeli Jews to weigh in on Israeli issues. Many Israeli proponents of the legislation routinely dismiss Jews like me in the diaspora who are against it based solely on the fact that we do not live in Israel and therefore should not have a say in the matter. One such death penalty supporter wrote on social media that “…although you are Jewish, you are not Israeli, nor do you live in Israel. Stay out of Israeli politics, and I’ll stay out of Canadian politics.”

The potential danger that Israel’s death penalty bill poses to global Jewry makes it entirely necessary for non-Israeli Jews to speak out. In the eyes of antisemites across the world, there is no distinction between Jews and Israelis. My own personal experience of antisemitic hatred supports this assertion. Israel’s war on Hamas in response to the mass killings and atrocities of October 7th, 2023 brought tremendous antisemitic outbursts against the members of my Jewish community here in British Columbia, Canada. The same held when my family and I lived in Washington, DC, at the start of the war. I vividly recall when, at that time, “Death to Israel” graffiti covered a bus stop just down the road from my children’s preschool in the US capital. The inseparable connection between Jews and Israelis in the minds of Israel’s enemies is precisely why non-Israeli Jewish voices should be a part of the discussion about an issue as vital to global Jewish safety as the death penalty.

The group “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty,” of which I am the co-founder, has the right – 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.

Specifically, the death penalty’s well-documented brutalization effect would entice would-be mar­tyrs to attack Jews. 19th-cen­tury writer Eliphas Levi highlighted the well-estab­lished rela­tion­ship between the death pen­alty and the desire for mar­tyr­dom when he wrote that “(e)very head that falls upon the scaf­fold may be honored and praised as the head of a mar­tyr.” Rad­ical Islam­ist ter­ror­ists – like those who per­pet­rated horrific mass murder on Octo­ber 7, 2023 – cel­eb­rate such martyrs in anti­cip­a­tion of the sup­posed rewards await­ing them in para­dise. They prefer mar­tyr­dom in the actual act of killing, but if they can kill and then be placed on a ped­es­tal – lauded as her­oes facing the death pen­alty for their cause – then all the bet­ter. Their idealization of celebrity execution is espe­cially true in a world where so many individuals hate Israel for how it treats its non-Jew­ish cit­izens. Why would Israel want to play into the hands of poten­tial ter­ror­ists in this way?

A far more severe pun­ish­ment for such individuals is incar­cer­a­tion, which forces terrorists to con­front what they have done while endur­ing the con­stric­tions of a max­imum-secur­ity prison every day. As a Jew­ish prison chap­lain, I can per­son­ally attest to this harsh real­ity.

Proponents of this bill maintain that execut­ing ter­ror­ists will pre­vent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps in Israel. What they fail to recog­nize is that Israel can avoid this out­come simply by chan­ging the law to for­bid includ­ing any­one dir­ectly involved in murder in any future pris­oner exchanges – without excep­tion. Such legis­la­tion would solve the prob­lem without cre­at­ing new mar­tyrs around whose memory other ter­ror­ists would assuredly rally.

This perilous bill poses an existential threat to the Jewish world. If the Knes­set were to enact it – lead­ing to the uncon­scion­able stain of exe­cu­tions darkening the moral fab­ric of Israeli soci­ety – anti­semitic extrem­ists would assuredly blame all the world’s Jews for this state-sponsored killing pro­gram. The death penalty would neatly fit into their warped view of Israel – and, by exten­sion, Juda­ism – as a so-called “death cult.”

Consider the probable future if Israel were to enact this legislation. As Ben Lynfield predicts, the bill, once passed, would mark a “looming death certificate for the Israel that was.” After the shock of the bill’s passage would settle, global nations would realize, as Ron Dudai has compellingly written, that the far-right will have cemented its ascendancy in Israeli society. Jewish death cult claims would gain credence worldwide. The bill would permanently decimate Israel’s already fragile moral compass in the minds of hundreds of millions of human beings and a vast majority of nations. As Israel would begin carrying out frequent executions of hundreds of prisoners, human rights activists the world over would continue to make legitimate comparisons with Iran and other global perpetrators of egregious judicial killings. The bill’s inherently racist nature – targeting only non-Jewish terrorists – would give only further weight to the argument that Israel is an apartheid state.

There are 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 is not a deterrence, incites further martyrs to attack Israel, viol­ates the human right to life, always con­sti­tutes tor­ture, risks execut­ing the inno­cent, is racist in its applic­a­tion, and would traumatize Israeli citizen executioners. From Adolf Hitler to Don­ald Trump to Ben-Gvir – the scepter of execution has been used as a polit­ical tools par­tic­u­larly dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns. It is for sound reason 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.

For all these reasons and more, L’chaim members have spoken out vociferously against this bill – and will continue to do so until Knesset members heed our voices of reason, for the sake of all the Jewish world.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

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