America Needs The Death Penalty. Israel Needs It Too.

I had a variety of thoughts and emotions as I watched the release of Israel's captives freed last Shabbat, and yesterday morning, as well as the tragic release of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons. I felt elation and joy over the return of Israelis to the loving arms of their families and their nation. But that was accompanied by sorrow and anger over the bitter price that Israel paid for their release. I wrote about that in last week's Shabbat message, so I won't rehash that here. Watching the heroes' welcome given to vile terrorists is a troubling reminder of the honor that Palestinian society bestows upon those who injure and murder Israelis. We know from previous lopsided prisoner exchanges that many will resume their terrorist agenda. Israelis will die in the future as a result. That is why I personally opposed every previous such prisoner exchange. I did not oppose this one, simply because of the sheer number of Israeli hostages. But the joy that world Jewry and Israel's supporters throughout the world are experiencing right now is tempered by the dangers that this deal portends. There is a reason that Jewish law warns against ransoming captives for too high a price, so as not to incentivize future hostage taking. Yet at the same time, we have a 2000 year old tradition of going against that principle, because we care about human life and the moral obligation to bring our people home.

That was one set of thoughts and emotions. The other is that America needs the death penalty. And Israel needs it too.

It's certainly no secret among those who have read my messages and articles or listened to my sermons over the years that I am in favor of the death penalty in certain unique and limited circumstances. I am one of a few non-Orthodox rabbis who still hold this position. I understand the danger of the death penalty. I am aware of the many mistakes that have been made over the years, and how the death penalty disproportionately is meted out to the poor as well as people of color. I am certainly aware that according to most current surveys, Americans' disapproval of capital punishment is growing. I certainly know that Jewish law and tradition for the past 2000 years has tried to create conditions so that the death penalty simply could not take place. At the same time, I believe fervently that our Rabbis never abrogated the right of a duly constituted Beit Din, a group of Rabbis sitting in judgment in a capital case, to mete out the death penalty if unique circumstances warranted it.

Presidential pardons have been in the news a lot for the last several weeks given former President Biden's controversial pardon of members of his immediate family, and President Trump’s unforgivable pardoning of January 6 insurrectionists. I want to draw your attention to another of President Biden's pardons that took place several weeks earlier, commuting the death sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners currently on death row.

Let's look at the three whose sentences he did not commute. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist murders of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.  In president Biden’s words: “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Think about that. Even a President committed to the abolition of the death penalty on the federal level, (remember -- a President does not have the power to pardon state crimes) did not commute the sentences of these three particular murderers. He didn't do so because the racial, anti-Semitic, and terrorist aspects of these horrendous crimes made them different from the other crimes commuted to life sentences. Without meaning to, President Biden only reinforced the idea that there are certain crimes that are so bad, so immoral, and so dangerous that they threaten society and its functioning order in unique ways. Though certainly not his intent, he actually endorsed the necessity of the death penalty.  For certain crimes, a judge must have the option to impose this most severe punishment if special conditions are met.

Currently, there is no capital punishment in Israel, except for murders and atrocities committed during the Holocaust. Given its severity, such punishment must remain rare to prevent abuse. Yet when we understand the scope and depravity of the evil that some of the freed terrorists perpetrated against the people of Israel, I hope it is evident what a mistake it has been for Israel. When we witness the release of unrepentant terrorists, a release that sadly had to take place to secure the freedom of Israel's hostages, we see a miscarriage of justice and the devaluation of human life that even our gratitude for the repatriation of Israel's hostages can never fully erase.

I hope this leads to what seems to be an inescapable conclusion. America needs the death penalty. And Israel needs it too.