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Photo: Shai Vaaknin
Eye for an eye
Assaf Wohl wants to see death penalty legislation in wake of recent murders
Some of Israel’s residents left the world over the weekend in an unnatural way. Some were choked, while others were lynched. The loss of human life in Israel as result of odd deaths has turned into a new leisure activity.
The solution for the phenomenon, as always, has to do with education. Yet a society whose members disparage the study of the humanities is forced to pay in blood. Of course, we cannot expect all of Israel’s residents to grasp the importance of investing in education in these fields. After all, the study of the humanities does not help to boost the stock market.
Long-term education for democracy and tolerance requires patience and vision. Therefore, we shouldn’t waste any time even proposing this possibility and instead move on to the next option: Enforcement.
A person who was not educated to respect the value of life walks around freely on the street. He is drunk, unrestrained, and blood-thirsty. Who will stop him now? A police officer. But we pay our police officers NIS 5,000 a month (roughly $1,250). What’s their motivation? And even if they really want to do something, how many police officers do we have out there? Can we post a policeman at every street corner?
So if we don’t have the education or the police, only one element can curb the killer. Deterrence. The latter is entrusted in the hands of lawmakers. What kind of legislation will stop the psychopath who in a moment will hurl a suitcase with his daughter in it into a river? You guessed right: The death penalty.
Preventing the next murder
In Western democracies, images of hanged criminals are passé. For liberals with humanistic tendencies, which is how I view myself, seeing an idle scaffolding is a pleasant sight. As far as I’m concerned, electric chairs are designed to heat up the seat of luxury vehicles.
In my view, executions only take place in primitive societies. On the other hand, a week that started with one lynching and two dismembered bodies does not bode well. Will the threat of execution save innocent lives? Has the time come to go back to the simple Biblical logic of “eye for an eye?”
Intuitively, it appears that in some cases the answer is yes. It won’t do any harm if once in a while people who dismember bodies will find themselves en route to the guillotine. Not out of a sense of revenge against a father who murdered his daughter. Also not because of the sense of appropriate retribution in the face of a person who killed someone else. Rather, in order to prevent the next murder. This is the only question that needs to be asked: Will the death penalty save us and our loved ones from the next murder?
In primitive societies, the only way to control the boorish masses is through severe punishment. As matters of morality are insignificant in our view, we see increasingly more people like that among us. Therefore, if there is no education and no enforcement, perhaps we need to go back to the glory days. Or as the Bible expresses is succinctly: “And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17). As simple as that.
