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........

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