The recent fatal vehicular ramming terrorist attack in the Armon HaNatziv area of Yerushalayim which claimed four lives, has led to the introduction of a bill seeking to permit ousting the family of a terrorist responsible for an attack. The two-part bill address cancelation of a family’s residency permit including residents of Yerushalayim as well as families of terrorists residing in Yehuda and Shomron.
The bill is the initiative of Minister of Transportation (Likud) Yisrael Katz, and the bill is on the agenda of the Knesset Law Committee for Sunday, 17 Teves. Katz feels this would increase Israel’s deterrence power to prevent such attack in the future, calling for sending the families of terrorists to Gaza or Syria. The minister called on coalition chair MK (Likud) David Bitan to push forward a similar bill from a few months ago, which enjoys the support of both coalition and opposition MKs. Among the MKs backing it are those from Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Yisrael Beitenu and Yahadut Hatorah.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
About time. You wanna support terrorism, go live with them.
This is a great idea but it should be applied equally to the families of Jews who commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians. Not sure where they would be deported to but in principle, there is no rational basis to distinguish between terrorists.
I don’t see it being a major deterrence! The terrorists don’t care about their own lives or their families lives so why would they care if they know their actions would cause their families to be ousted out their homes??
Collective punishment is a difficult approach to deterring terrorism. Any punishment that by passes due process of law is open to serious abuse. The Torah does not punish a family for the actions of one of its members. Each person is held accountable for his own actions. However in Arabic culture the family is the basic unit and not the individual and it is common practice among Arabs to hold the family accountable for the actions of an individual. The hidden rule in Israel has always been to treat the Arabs like Arabs and the Jews like Jews. Passing a law would make this an open policy and make more problems than it solves.
#2- You have advocated this point a number of times on the forum. My question to you is, why the obsession with “Jewish terrorists”? The point of such bills is to stop the widespread support of those who support terror, and hopefully deter them. What you are advocating is akin to treating a mosquito bite with chemotherapy- completely overreacting.