NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to
violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.
PAGE TITLE: http://www.jpost.com/
ARTICLE
TITLE:
Time to institute the death penalty for terrorists
DATE: Tuesday 18 October
2011
AUTHOR: Jonathan Rosen
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Jonathan Rosen, novelist, memoirist, editor, and
journalist, is the author of the new novel, "Joy Comes in the
Morning" (2004), a playful, probing novel about Jewish faith and identity.
The novel follows the growth of a romantic relationship between Deborah Green,
a Reform rabbi, and Lev Friedman, a science writer and skeptic. Writing in the
"New York Times," reviewer Art Winslow said, "Not since E.
L. Doctorow's 'City of God' have we seen such a literary effort to plumb
the nature of belief- in Jewish-American culture, in Talmudic study, in prayer,
in sexual relations, in the very soundness of one's own mind." The
"New Yorker" said, "Rosen's touching novel of Jewish manners
thoughtfully addresses the question of whether piety can teach us faith."
Rosen's first novel was "Eve's
Apple" (1997), the story of a young woman's struggle with anorexia. The
"New Yorker" called "Eve's Apple," "An impressive
debut--a highly original addition to the distinguished line of Jewish-American
romances." Writing in the "New York Review of Books," Sue
Halpern called it, "A realistic and emotionally complex narrative . . .
Intention and desire, love's chaos, sadness that cannot be extinguished--the
emotional nuances that Rosen brings to 'Eve's Apple' are haunting."
Rosen is also the author of "The Talmud
and the Internet" (2000), a family memoir as well as a meditation on
Judaism, literature, and technology. In advance praise, Cynthia
Ozick said, "Its wisdom is in its mixture of rapture and elegy and
honesty and reverence. Its learning leaps into living contemporaneity; it
honors father and mother and grandparents; it thinks into both past and future;
it shines with beauty and originality."
Rosen is the former cultural editor of the
English language Jewish weekly, "The Forward," and a frequent
contributor to the "New York Times" and the "New Yorker."
He currently serves as series editor of the "Jewish Encounters Book
Series," a collaboration between Schocken Books and Nextbook.org. The first
two books in the series include the short biography, "Maimonides"
(2005), by author and physician Sherwin Nuland, and "The Life of
David" (2005), a prose biography of the biblical king by former U. S. Poet
Laureate Robert
Pinsky. Other forthcoming books include Stephen J. Dubner on Moses, Stephen
Greenblatt on the city of Vilna, Hillel Halkin on medieval poet Yehuda Halevi, Ben
Katchor on kosher dairy restaurants, and David Mamet on Jewish self-hatred
and anti-Semitism.
 |
|
Jonathan
Rosen
|
Time to institute the death penalty for terrorists
By
JONATHAN ROSEN
10/18/2011
22:24
Lopsided hostage deals make a mockery of the Israeli justice system.
Much has
been written and said about the risks posed by the lopsided Gilad Schalit deal.
Some arguments focus primarily on the threat posed by potential recidivism
among the newly-released prisoners, which stands at 60 percent based on
previous deals. Others touch upon the encouragement presumed to be drawn by
Palestinian organizations to kidnap additional Israelis for bargaining
purposes. Still others address the implicit message to the prospective
perpetrators of future attacks: your sentence is likely to be commuted, the
punishment will almost certainly not fit the crime.
The risks are all very real and, regrettably, are likely to have a personal and painful impact on Israeli individuals in the future, either in the form of violent attacks or kidnappings.
Beyond that, however, another danger lurks beneath the surface, a danger that is posed to Israeli society as a whole and which threatens its democratic and law abiding nature.
The risks are all very real and, regrettably, are likely to have a personal and painful impact on Israeli individuals in the future, either in the form of violent attacks or kidnappings.
Beyond that, however, another danger lurks beneath the surface, a danger that is posed to Israeli society as a whole and which threatens its democratic and law abiding nature.
It
should be eminently clear that a recurring decision by the political echelon to
circumvent due legal process and to grant clemency to murderers and other
convicted terrorists will necessarily produce a loss of public faith in the
justice system, which is a pillar of any democratic society.
Without
popular confidence in the justice system, anarchy and vigilantism are sure to
reign. After all, one of the central purposes of the criminal justice system is
for the state to wrest responsibility for serving justice out of the hands of
the injured party. But if the state repeatedly demonstrates that it cannot be
trusted to mete out justice, individuals are liable to begin to do so
themselves.
The
erosion of public confidence in the criminal justice system is not caused by
inherent flaws in that system, as would be the case in the event of corrupt
judges, for example. Rather, it stems from the intervention by external forces,
the executive branch in this case, that override the decisions made by the
criminal justice system.
As
a rule, Israelis take pride in their justice system and have faith in it. They
are right to do so. It is to the Israeli justice system’s credit that a former
president was convicted this year of rape and was sentenced to seven years
imprisonment, that a former prime minister is currently on trial for charges of
corruption and that a former finance minister is now in prison for corruption.
A justice system that is courageous enough to prosecute the most powerful is
praiseworthy.
THE
DANGER to public confidence stems from the excessive use the executive branch
has made of its prerogative to circumvent due legal process in the 26 years
that have elapsed since the 1985 Jibril deal. Because repeated political
intervention in the legal system – and that is precisely what a government
decision to grant clemency en masse in a prisoner exchange deal is – renders
the legal process a farce. If used sparingly, this intervention can be
tolerated by the public. But the more frequently it recurs the more inescapable
it becomes to all the parties involved – the state, the accused and the
citizens – that they are participating in a sham.
Take
the example of Said Ibrahim Shalaldeh, who up until yesterday was serving two
life sentences, one of which was for brutally stabbing to death the 51-year-old
Sasson Nuriel in 2005. He was released yesterday, less than a decade after his
arrest.
What is the Israeli public supposed to think about the next such arrest and trial, in which someone of Shalaldeh’s ilk is prosecuted and sentenced to one, two or ten lifeterms in prison? How is the defendant going to view those proceedings as anything but a farce, given the lessons of Shalaldeh’s commuted sentence and release, one among hundreds? Serial government-sanctioned miscarriages of justice undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system and violate the confidence that every citizen must have in the state’s commitment to ensuring that justice is served. Without that confidence, Israel will most certainly devolve into a regressive society like its scorned neighbors’, in which individuals who want justice will resort to revenge and other forms of vigilantism.
What is the Israeli public supposed to think about the next such arrest and trial, in which someone of Shalaldeh’s ilk is prosecuted and sentenced to one, two or ten lifeterms in prison? How is the defendant going to view those proceedings as anything but a farce, given the lessons of Shalaldeh’s commuted sentence and release, one among hundreds? Serial government-sanctioned miscarriages of justice undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system and violate the confidence that every citizen must have in the state’s commitment to ensuring that justice is served. Without that confidence, Israel will most certainly devolve into a regressive society like its scorned neighbors’, in which individuals who want justice will resort to revenge and other forms of vigilantism.
How
can this situation be remedied? How can Israel forestall the loss of public
confidence in the sentences that are meted out to terrorists upon the
completion of due process? One obvious option is to introduce, in the most
extreme cases, the use of the death penalty. Particularly heinous crimes can
and perhaps ought to be punished by death, a punishment that cannot be reversed
as a result of political pressure. The death penalty ensures that the worst of
all criminals are fully and irrevocably punished by the state and that justice
has been publicly served.
To
date, the use of the death penalty in Israel has been reserved for Nazis, and
was carried out only in the case of Adolf Eichmann.
It
could be that the time has arrived to reconsider those restrictions, which are anachronistic
in more than one way at the close of 2011.
For
better and for worse, Israeli society and Israeli governments have been unable
in the past 25 years to withstand the pressure to release convicted murderers
and others in exchange for kidnapped soldiers. Ultimately, the lengths to which
the state and society are prepared to go to save each individual Israeli is
something to take pride in. That said, this comes with a cost that is borne by
individual Israelis who are the victims of pursuant attacks, and to democratic
Israeli society as a whole. One way of mitigating this cumulative damage caused
is to begin to instate the death penalty for the most heinous and extraordinary
crimes.
The
writer is a veteran Israeli writer and translator.
