{"id":53119,"date":"2026-04-05T21:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T21:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/53119\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T21:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T21:00:19","slug":"the-blogs-menachem-begin-would-be-horrified-by-israels-death-penalty-law-menachem-rosensaft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/53119\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blogs: Menachem Begin would be horrified by Israel\u2019s death penalty law | Menachem Rosensaft"},"content":{"rendered":"

The death penalty law<\/a> adopted last week by a bare majority of 62 Knesset members is a discriminatory abomination that would subject West Bank Palestinians to capital punishment. Unless it is annulled by Israel\u2019s Supreme Court, this statute\u2019s very existence is certain to further isolate Israel in the international community and will exacerbate the county\u2019s relations with many Jews across the globe.\n<\/p>\n

The offending and offensive law<\/a> goes counter to Israel\u2019s character, in the words of its Declaration of Independence<\/a>, as a \u201cJewish state\u201d that \u201cwill ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants.\u201d Its sinister nature was made evident by the noose-shaped lapel pin<\/a> worn by its sponsor, the neo-fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, at a Knesset hearing on the legislation.\n<\/p>\n

Article 3 of this statute requires<\/a> Israel\u2019s defense minister to direct the commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank to insert the following provision in \u201cthe Order regarding Security\u201d within 30 days of the law becoming operative:\n<\/p>\n

A resident of the Area [i.e., the West Bank] who intentionally causes the death of a person, where the act constitutes an act of terrorism as defined in the Counter-Terrorism Law, 5776\u20132016 (hereinafter \u2013\u00a0 a terrorist), shall be sentenced to death, and this punishment only; however, if the Military Court finds, for special reasons which shall be recorded, that special circumstances exist for which it is appropriate to sentence the terrorist to life imprisonment, it may impose such a sentence, and this punishment only; in this subsection, a \u201cresident of the Area\u201d \u2013 one who is registered in the population registry of the Area or one who resides in the Area even if not registered in said registry, excluding an Israeli citizen or an Israeli resident.<\/p>\n

In other words, the law applies only to West Bank Palestinians and not to any Israeli living there. Thus, a West Bank Palestinian convicted of a lethal act of terrorism could be sent to the gallows while an Israeli settler or an Israeli thug who kills a Palestinian child or woman would be immune from such a sentence.\n<\/p>\n

Simply put, the very notion that Israelis \u2013 read Israeli Jews or Israeli Jewish settlers \u2013 should be treated differently as a matter of law than Palestinians in the West Bank is abhorrent and should force Israelis, even with Iranian missiles raining down on them, to determine whether this is really what they want their country to look like. It also requires those of us in the diaspora who consider ourselves liberal or progressive Zionists to scrutinize our relationship with and attitude toward the present Israel government.\n<\/p>\n

I am not questioning diaspora Jewry\u2019s commitment to and identification with the State of Israel and its people. These are and should be sacrosanct. The administration led by the hyper-nationalistic Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and the aforementioned Ben-Gvir is another matter altogether.\n<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s first two prime ministers, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett, whom I was privileged to know as my father\u2019s friends, believed that Israel must at all times be both Jewish and democratic. So did Prime Minister Menachem Begin who declared<\/a> in the Knesset in 1962 \u201cthat in the Jewish State, there must be and will be equal rights for all its citizens, irrespective of religion, nation, or origin.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that Begin would be horrified by the death penalty law.\n<\/p>\n

In his lecture<\/a> upon receiving the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, he quoted what he called \u201cthe magnificently written words\u201d of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that \u201cAll human beings are born free and equal, in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.\u201d Begin then added that \u201cFree women and men everywhere must wage an incessant campaign so that these human values become a generally recognized and practiced reality.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Along the same lines, former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, a staunch proponent of annexing the West Bank, maintained<\/a> that \u201capplying sovereignty to an area gives citizenship to all those living there.\u201d He was adamant that \u201cif we extend sovereignty, the law must apply equally to all,\u201d that is, to Israelis and non-Israelis alike.\n<\/p>\n

Begin was and Rivlin is a disciple of Vladimir Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, the nationalist Zionist ideologue and activist whose goal was Jewish control over the entirety of British Mandatory Palestine. \u00a0Netanyahu claims to be so as well; he has said<\/a> that \u201cI have Jabotinsky\u2019s works on my shelf, and I read them often.\u201d Except that he seems to have missed, or disingenuously chooses to ignore, those works in which Jabotinsky advocated full quality for minorities \u2013 that is, Arabs \u2013 living in an eventual Jewish state. According to Jabotinsky<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

Democracy means freedom. Even a government of majority rule can negate freedom; and where there are no guarantees for freedom of the individual, there can be no democracy.\u00a0These contradictions will have to be prevented. The Jewish State will have to be such, ensuring that the minority will not be rendered defenseless.<\/p>\n

I write as a professor of law who teaches about the law of genocide at the law schools of Cornell and Columbia Universities, and about antisemitism in the courts and in jurisprudence\u00a0 to law students and undergraduates at Cornell. I cannot in good conscience overlook the daunting reality that the death penalty law violates international human rights law.\n<\/p>\n

In this context, it is important to bear in mind that Israel formally ratified<\/a> the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights<\/a> that guarantees \u201cthe right to equality before the law.\u201d Emphasis on \u201cequality.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In July 2018, after the Knesset, by the same 62 vote majority, adopted a similarly controversial law defining Israel \u201cas the Nation-State of the Jewish People\u201d in which the \u201cright to exercise national self-determination is unique to the Jewish people,\u201d the author and political commentator Yossi Klein Halevi observed<\/a> that \u201cIsrael is based on two non-negotiable identities. The homeland of all Jews, whether or not they are citizens of Israel, and it\u2019s the state of all its citizens, whether or not they are Jews. Anything that upset that balance, in either direction, is a threat to Israel.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

By that measure, the threat to Israel posed by the death penalty law is downright existential. It is also profoundly un-Jewish. As Rabbi Arie Hasit, the associate dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem has cogently pointed out<\/a>, \u201cA law meant to protect Jewish or Israeli life while remaining cavalier regarding Palestinian life goes against one of the most basic principles of Judaism.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

We stand at a crossroads. Much to the displeasure of the Netanyahu-Levin-Ben-Gvir crew who have been trying to weaken if not scuttle Israel\u2019s independent judiciary since coming to power at the end of December 2022, the Israel Supreme Court is likely to invalidate this particular law, providing a measure of breathing space. But that does not mean that we can relax.\n<\/p>\n

On the contrary.\n<\/p>\n

On July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly, by a vote of 569 to 80<\/a>, accepted a humiliating armistice with Nazi Germany. The 569 parliamentarians who agreed to collaborate with Hitler\u2019s Third Reich are widely vilified in present-day France as responsible for replacing their nation\u2019s fundamental principles of Libert\u00e9, \u00c9galit\u00e9, Fraternit\u00e9\u00a0(Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) with Marechal Philippe P\u00e9tain\u2019s far-right nationalist slogan of Travail, Famille, Patrie (Work, Family, Fatherland). The 80 who voted no, meanwhile, are revered for refusing to yield to fascism.\n<\/p>\n

The 62 Knesset members, including Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Levin, who voted in favor of the death penalty law are as ignominious as the 569 French parliamentarians who brought the collaborationist Vichy French regime into existence. With any amount of luck, they will be ousted from power in the next Israeli national elections.\n<\/p>\n

We in the diaspora must draw our own line in the sand. If we don\u2019t want to have anything to do with politicians or influencers who deny Israel\u2019s legitimacy as a nation, we must in the same vein unequivocally and publicly denounce not just the death penalty law but also those Israeli politicians who seem intent on blowing up Israel\u2019s democracy.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death penalty law adopted last week by a bare majority of 62 Knesset members is a discriminatory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[17850,37,8750,19306,2253,21270,545],"class_list":{"0":"post-53119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-death-penalty","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-itamar-ben-gvir","11":"tag-menachem-begin","12":"tag-palestinians","13":"tag-reuven-rivlin","14":"tag-terrorism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116354116690546775","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}