3 min read
As you will doubtless have gathered, Israeli politics is currently undergoing something of a revolution. Following the Knesset elections of 2015, Bibi Netanyahu managed to stitch together a coalition government that has enjoyed an ultra precarious one-seat majority in the Knesset. To broaden his parliamentary base, Netanyahu recently attempted to woo Isaac Herzog's centre-left Zionist Union, but this deal, though it had Herzog's personal approval (and had in fact been brokered by none other than the former British prime minister, Tony Blair), was vetoed by Herzog's party colleagues. So Netanyahu has turned instead to Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the secularist right-wing "Yisrael Beiteinu" party, which has six Knesset seats.
Last month, an agreement between Lieberman and Netanyahu was finalised. As part of the deal, Lieberman has become minister of defence in Netanyahu's government. During the negotiations between the two men, Lieberman made a highly controversial demand, to which Netanyahu has reportedly agreed. The demand is not (as many media outlets have wrongly reported) that Palestinian activists convicted of terrorist offences in the Liberated Territories (Judea andSamaria) be subject to the death penalty, but rather that it should be easier for military courts in these territories to impose death sentences on such activists. Last year, Lieberman introduced into the Knesset a bill that sought to replace the current rule - that military courts seeking the death sentence need to obtain the unanimous approval of a panel of three judges - by one in which a simple majority would suffice. The bill was rejected on its first reading by 94 votes to six. But, in the Territories, the reform that Lieberman seeks could be imposed by a military order, thus bypassing the Knesset. It is this reform to which Netanyahu has reportedly agreed.
I am basically an opponent of the death penalty, but on exclusively practical grounds. My views on this matter came to maturity in the mid-1950s, and what weighed heavily with me - and I am sure with many others at that time - were two cases in this country in which, beyond any reasonable doubt, the death sentence was carried out in error. One concerned the hanging of Timothy Evans (March 9, 1950), who had been convicted of having murdered his infant daughter on the perjured evidence of the necrophiliac former policeman John Christie. The other concerned the hanging of Derek Bentley (January 28, 1953), who had set out with an accomplice (Christopher Craig) to carry out a burglary. Disturbed by the police, Craig allegedly shot dead a police officer, but while he escaped capital punishment because he was then aged 16, Bentley (then aged 19 and convicted on the basis that he was a member of a "joint enterprise") did not.
Evans and Bentley have since been given posthumous pardons. But that must be of very little comfort to their families. When persons are wrongly executed for crimes they did not commit, no meaningful restitution can ever be made.
I am mindful, however, that the religion I profess does not prohibit capital punishment. Nor do the laws of the state of Israel. On June 1, 1962 Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant-colonel in the SS who was operationally in charge of the Final Solution - the Nazi plan to exterminate all of European Jewry - was hanged in Ramla prison after a trial that attracted worldwide attention. Eichmann's was one of only two executions ever to have been sanctioned and carried out by the Jewish state. Of his guilt there can be no possible doubt.
Why, then, am I troubled by the proposal to facilitate the imposition of the death penalty upon convicted Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria? It's not because I have any sympathy for them. I don't. It's not because I fear international reaction. I don't. I cannot, however, in all conscience, approve of a plan that would subject Palestinian Arabs in the Territories to capital punishment for murder, but not extend this to Jews. And then we have to consider the possibility of wrongful conviction.
The first execution in Israel took place on June 30, 1948, when an Israeli army officer, Meir Tobianski, was found guilty of espionage and executed by firing squad. In fact the accusations were quite false and a year later he was publicly exonerated. But that must have been of very little comfort to his widow.
I understand the anger generated in Israel by the multiple murders carried out by Palestinian Arabs. But would these fanatics be deterred by the thought of death? I very much doubt it.