Housing Minister (Bayit Yehudi) Uri Ariel has come out in support of Israel’s death penalty law, which was only used once in the nation’s history, against Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann YS”VZ.
Like other government officials, Ariel over recent days visited with the families of the hostage youths, telling the media he was strengthened by the families’ fortitude and bitachon in HKBH.
According to the Walla News report quoting the minister, is feels the time has come to apply the law to terrorists following the kidnapping of the three Jewish teens. To date, the law has not been applied for fear it would result in the sudden execution of soldiers and pilots taken captive by the enemy.
However, since the infamous Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal which resulted in the release of over 1,000 terrorists to bring Shalit home, there has been mounting opposition to future terrorist release deals.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
Given that the IDF frequently kills terrorists, it is clear that anyone becoming a terrorist is not concerned with living a long life, so there would be no deterent effect (unlike non-political criminals). It does mean that all terrorists would prefer to “die fighting” rather than surrender, which isn’t in Israel’s interests. Furthermore, executing political prisoners just makes them into heroes.
@akuperma,
It is not deterrence of violent acts that is the intention but deterrence of those acts that cause kidnappings to secure prisoner release. If there are no prisoners to release then there is no reason to kidnap. Hamas has been advocating kidnappings to free prisoners for some time now and was the intention of the Shalit kidnapping. The MK should propose that any involvement in any act which results in serious injury or death should incur the death penalty, if it is politically, ethnically, or religiously motivated. Hate crimes receive harsher than average penalties, so there is precedent for upping the sentence to include also those crimes which involve injury, as well.