Posted on 07/21/2008 4:37:47 PM PDT by SJackson
The sickening specter of a monster like Samir Kuntar being welcomed home in Lebanon as a conquering hero should turn the stomachs of all who repose faith in humanity. Even for a generation neutered to horror stories, his crimes stand out. In April, 1979, after killing a police officer and then shooting Danny Haran at close range in the back in front of his four-year-old-daughter Einat, Kuntar proceeded to smash the head of the little girl on beach rocks and then crushed her skull with the butt of his rifle. The coup-de-grace was when, in an attempt to hide her surviving child Yael from Kuntar, Smadar Haran accidentally suffocated her while attempting to quiet her whimpering so as not to reveal their hiding place.
I still remember, as a boy, encountering the rabbinical teaching that humiliating someone in public is worse than actually killing them. What? Worse than murder? Years later, it made sense to me. When you embarrass someone, you make them wish they were dead. You have, in effect, made them into their own murderer. This is the legacy of Kuntar. True evil corrupts all around it and is capable of transforming even the most loving mother into an accomplice to murder. One can only imagine the anguish that Smadar Haran, who has since thankfully remarried, feels as she watches Israel's northern neighbor roll out the red carpet for the heartless killer who exterminated her family.
But the bizarre story of the release of Kuntar does not end there and includes the fact that while a prisoner in jail he married an Israeli Arab woman who campaigned on his behalf. Although he later divorced her, she was paid a monthly stipend by the government for being the wife of an incarcerated prisoner.
All this would be comical if it were not so tragic.
IT IS time that we articulate what few wish to, namely, that Israel must finally institute a death penalty for convicted terrorists.
To be sure, human life is of infinite value and every human being is equally a child of God. No country upholds this statute more than Israel, which is why it is prepared to set killers free just to retrieve the bodies of its fallen soldiers. Israel could have defeated Hizbullah and Hamas with ease had it not always limited its overwhelming firepower to protect innocent civilians. A country this virtuous naturally balks from putting anyone, even terrorists, to death.
But there exist those fiends whose crimes are so heinous that they have erased the image of God from their countenance and have forfeited any reasonable right to walk God's earth. Worse, keeping terrorists alive in prison just invites further kidnappings of innocent civilians and soldiers who are hunted down by Hamas and Hizbullah to exchange for their terrorist brothers.
Here in the United States there is an impassioned and legitimate debate as to the humanity and righteousness of the death penalty. Those who argue against it maintain that mistakes are made and innocent people are meted out the most severe and irreversible punishment imaginable. They, of course, have a point. A moral society shudders before it takes life and only does so when there is an essential certainty that the defendant in question is guilty of unspeakable crimes. Indeed, no major legal work has ever been harsher on the death penalty than the Talmud which states: "A Sanhedrin which kills once in seven years is considered murderous. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said: Once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon said: If we had been in the Sanhedrin, no one would have ever been killed..." (Mishna Makot 1:10).
BUT SURELy these humanitarian considerations do not, cannot, apply to terrorists like Kuntar who infiltrate a country looking to dash children's brains against rocks. And keeping them alive once they are caught simply draws a bull's-eye on countless other innocent civilians who become magnets for trade. This, of course, is exactly what occurred with Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. Indeed, keeping terrorist mass-murderers alive in prison bespeaks a contempt for life, demonstrating as it does that civil societies lack the moral courage to draw a line and declare that the lives of mass murderers, after a fair and impartial trial, will always be forfeit.
Few Americans flinched when Timothy McVeigh was executed in June 2001 for having murdered 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing six years earlier. Israel itself put Adolf Eichmann to death in May 1962 for being one of the supreme architects of the Holocaust. The allied nations of the world came together to conduct the Nuremberg Trials of major Nazi war criminals, hanging 10 of the convicted on October 16, 1946. Their purpose was to broadcast to all humanity the fate of anyone who would ever attempt such crimes again.
As for those who argue that if Israel puts its terrorist captives to death the same will be done to its soldiers once captured, I ask, does anyone seriously believe that it would be otherwise? We once believed that Goldwasser and Regev might likewise come home alive, and for two years Hizbullah manipulated the emotions of the country to believe just that. But like so many other Israeli prisoners before them, they ultimately came home in a box.
I am not suggesting that Israel take unilateral action and simply hang captured terrorists. They should be given a fair trial, just like Kuntar, in which he was found guilty and sentenced to more than 500 years in prison. But once found guilty and allowed an appeal, if their conviction is upheld, they must be executed.
There are times when a country must temporarily violate a principle to ensure it is upheld. Police cars speed to catch those who themselves speed on highways, thereby endangering other motorists. Surgeons cut open people's chests with knives to save their blocked arteries and stopped hearts. And just governments must sometimes take the lives of unrepentant terrorist mass-murderers to protect and uphold the infinite value of human life.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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But there exist those fiends whose crimes are so heinous that they have erased the image of God from their countenance and have forfeited any reasonable right to walk God's earth.
Exactly, so what principle is being violated?
I would suggest by not executing murderers, a principle is being violated.
Murderers (polticial murderers, like terrorists, included), gang-rapists and paedophiles should be hanged in every instance without fail.
Exactly, when murderers are not executed, the principle that Human life is sacred is being violated.
There are some creatures, if not killed, will almost certainly kill again.
This Kuntar slime is such a creature. It is regrettable that this creature was not exterminated.
Pvt. Eddie Slovik, for example.
“I am not suggesting that Israel take unilateral action and simply hang captured terrorists.”
Why not? I have always wondered why a country that is located in the midst of one of the most violent parts of the world shies away from the death penalty. Does Israel really think that, by not sending terrorists to the gallows, Israeli POW will receive better treatment? How many of these POW have been returned alive?
But perhaps I should not be so critical about Israel’s conduct — we too handle Muslim terrorists with kid gloves. (How many American POW, captured by Muslim terrorists have been returned alive?)
It has nothing to do with that, it's a moral judgement. Though Israel is a secular state, the death penalty is virtually impossible to carry out in Judaism, and that carries over. I don't get, but I live here.
In a similar vein, despite understanding the no one left behind imperative, I don't get the lengths Israel goes to retrieving remains either.
Different mindset, I'd give them fair trial and hang them.
That's not virtuous. It's cowardly & immoral. Stop trying to fool yourselves.
That's not virtuous. It's cowardly & immoral. Stop trying to fool yourselves.
Exactly right. Terrorists with blood on their hands should be hanged. They should be sweated for any information they have, and then hanged within days.
“Though Israel is a secular state, the death penalty is virtually impossible to carry out in Judaism..”
Thanks for the info.
I doubt you really mean that.
From capture to trial to hanging was 9 or 10 days for Major John André. Wouldn't happen today I admit, but if captured rather than killed, I'm ok with terrorists being dealt with in whatever system of jurisprudence applies.
Terrorists caught by Israelis should not survive their capture by more than a few minutes. They become terrible liabilities to Israel.
If Israel want's to avoid the death penalty, a true life sentence would be appropriate.
Life, for life, not until the enemy has collected enough prisoners and body parts for a deal.
I didn’t say that to you. I said it to the article & to this defeatist mindset that Jews have in which they cover up their self-imposed helplessness with lectures on how they’re so moral & virtuous. Letting Jew killers go free is not moral & it’s not virtuous. It’s an abomination.
Give 'em a fair trial first, then hang 'em
Israel must learn many lessons about life and other people.
They have never learned that while they hold dear a thousand joys of life, the Muslims only care for land, their obsession. Thus it is fruitless to bargain with Muslims, for Israel cannot and should not relinquish land to them—it only whets their appetite for more. All Israel can do is take land from the Muslims, not to bargain for its return, but to threaten that if they do not cease their violence, then more land shall be taken from them, until the Muslims have none. This alone will compel them to peace.
And Israel has never learned that life only matters to those who cherish life. They cannot imagine that for some others, human life has no value at all. That if anything, for them life is a hateful thing, so they seek death for others and even themselves.
It is not, nor could it ever be murder to kill such people, for like rabid dogs, the only peace they shall ever find is in the ground.
The last lesson that Israel needs to learn is that even the honors they bestow on the earthly remains of their fallen sons, should not be extended to such worshipers of death. For the lessons that Israelis teach their children about those who have died are the memories of a good life and the love of family.
Instead the eulogy for a dead terrorist is to spread more hate and destruction, to call for murder and to celebrate slaughter. This is a foul thing, a living memory of evil. For the Israelis to pitch the remains of such a murderer into a cesspit is a better departure, as it deprives the priests of evil a rallying point for more murder.
A very long time ago, Israelis fought against pagan peoples, and gave no quarter to the destruction of their idols and temples. And such pagans would have given none in return. The Israelis should remember those lessons learned with blood, and no longer tolerate those who would destroy them utterly.
You cannot live with a neighbor whose burning passion is to murder you. You must be rid of them.
My principles state that deliberate murderers must be executed. No other justice is possible. This is whether they are ‘terrorists’, or just scumbags.
The death penalty is the only moral response to murder and rape.
In fact, I will. That's not virtuous. It's cowardly & immoral.
So is sacrificing your own soldiers and civilians to protect the lives of your enemy.
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