Knesset’s death penalty vote is a betrayal of Jewish wisdom

Anyone who has studied the Talmud in detail will be acutely aware of how the sages viewed the state-sanctioned death penalty. The Torah’s imposition of death as a punishment for various crimes is unambiguous, with four distinct methods delineated. However, the leading religious authorities of the late Second Temple era, as subsequently set out in the Talmudic tractate of Sanhedrin, effectively made the death penalty impossible to enact.

Let me give a few examples to underscore the point. There needed to be at least two witnesses to the crime, both observant Jewish men, not related to each other. The witnesses had to have specifically warned the individual carrying out the crime that it was an action punishable by the death penalty, and the perpetrator had to have actively and verbally acknowledged that they knew this and were doing it anyway.

Moving on to the court case itself; if the justices on the court unanimously ruled in favour of death the verdict was negated, on the assumption that if not a single judge could find a reason to vote against death then the court was clearly biased. Ultimately, using a logic which can only really be described as Talmudic, the late Second Temple’s religious authorities determined that a verdict of death could only be decided if the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court, was sitting in a specific location on the Temple Mount – and thereafter permanently stopped convening there.

The Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, has 120 members because it is specifically designed to harken back to the ancient Jewish organisation known as the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah – the “Men of the Great Assembly” – comprised of that number, which sat in the early Second Temple era. Just how different today’s institution is from that ancient gathering of some of the finest minds in Judaism was in full display on Monday, as it voted in favour of introducing the death penalty.

The bill itself was hideously one-sided, something made fundamentally clear by those who introduced it and have backed it. It is specifically targeted at Palestinian terrorists, treating them differently from Jewish-Israeli ones – but of course, according to the “Jewish Power” party led by far-right Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, which introduced the bill, there is no such thing as Jewish-Israeli terrorism (for years Ben Gvir had a picture of Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 29 people in his 1994 attack at the Cave of the Patriarchs, hanging proudly in his home).

our sages, who set out the laws and requirements of rabbinic Judaism, recognised a fundamental truth – that a society in which the death penalty was carried out was morally coarsening itself

The celebrations around the passing of the bill were also predictable, given the personalities involved. Ben Gvir was prevented by Knesset security from opening a bottle of champagne in the chamber itself (he had to settle for opening it outside the plenary hall). In a voice choked with emotion, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Limor Son-Har Melech, who was presiding over the session, recited the Shehecheyanu prayer – traditionally a celebration of life, now used to rejoice in the hope of future state-sanctioned death. Weeks ago, Har Melech had dressed up as the “death penalty bill” for Purim, holding a noose.

The truth is that despite the Knesset vote, the policy is unlikely to be instituted. Israel’s Supreme Court, which has weathered attempts by the current coalition government to remove its powers, will most probably strike it down. But it is worth some discussion as to how Israel got to this point, because it is not quite as simple as so many of those condemning it would like to admit.

Over the last two decades, Israelis have come to know with some measure of certainty that if a Palestinian terrorist receives multiple life sentences for the murder of their loved ones, sooner or later they will be released, often receiving a heroes’ welcome in the West Bank. This is because Hamas has repeatedly demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted for murderous terrorism, in return for freeing Israelis it has taken captive. Polling shows that there is a consistent majority (approximately two thirds of the population) of Israelis who support the death penalty for terrorism, and what I have mentioned in this paragraph is the primary reason why.

In 2003, Limor Son-Har Melech, mentioned above, was driving through the West Bank when members of Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade opened fire on the car. She was seven months pregnant, and was left in critical condition – the baby was born by emergency caesarean some hours later.

Does this mean that she is somehow justified in her celebration of the introduction of the death penalty? I would say no – no more than a Palestinian who has had family members of their own killed by the IDF is in any way ‘justified’ in joining Hamas and seeking to carry out attacks of their own.

And this is the important point – that despite the cogent reasons why a majority of Israelis support the logic behind the death penalty, attempts to introduce it are still fundamentally wrong.

Two thousand years ahead of the majority of the Western world, our sages, who set out the laws and requirements of rabbinic Judaism, recognised a fundamental truth – that a society in which the death penalty was carried out was morally coarsening itself. Tractate Makkot states that any Sanhedrin which carried out even one death sentence in a seven-year period (or even, according to one leading sage, within a seventy-year period), was viewed as “destructive”.

Bills such as these are tempting – unbelievably tempting – for those who see constant miscarriages of justice in the release of murderers. But the ultimate effect it will have is not on the terrorists themselves, who will embrace martyrdom, but on the moral psyche of the nation carrying out the death sentences. And the scenes of celebration by the “Jewish Power” party in the wake of the Knesset vote illustrate this for everyone to see.