If enacted, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s proposed death penalty bill would spell moral and ultimately existential catastrophe for Israel and Jews across the world. In a recent email exchange with an astute Israeli insider, I shared the fear that this bill would pass in the Knesset, and prayed that I was wrong. In response, my politically savvy friend wrote unambiguously: “That would be catastrophic.”

Some might claim that his statement is hyperbolic. They would be wrong. The collective deterrence delusion that sustains this racist bill in the minds of so many proponents blinds them to the most imminent peril posed by this legislation. Not only will it fail to deter ter­ror­ism – and betray Jewish values by cheapening life – but it will, in fact, incite and invite more mur­der­ous acts of ter­ror. It will cross a line from which the state of Israel would never be able to recover. No invocation of the deterrence delusion – not even by the Shin Bet – can erase the reality that the death penalty will doom Israel to an ultimately catastrophic, self-destructive path that will engender all the Jewish world.

The Brutalization Effect

Scholars have written for decades about capital punishment’s “brutalization effect,” namely, how the death penalty actually increases homicide rates rather than deterring them. Prominent criminologist William J. Bowers verified this execution byproduct in his seminal work “Deterrence or Brutalization: What is the Effect of Executions?” – a foundational 1980 study with Glenn Pierce analyzing New York State homicide data from 1907 to 1963, and a second scholarly article entitled “The Effect of Executions is Brutalization, Not Deterrence (1988),” which presented a comprehensive re-evaluation of the deterrence versus brutalization debate. Bowers’ research, particularly his 1980 article with Glenn Pierce, found that homicides typically increased by two to three incidents in the months immediately following an execution. His scholarship included various arguments. First, Bowers found that executions send a message that “lethal vengeance” is a socially acceptable response to a perceived wrong. Bowers also concluded that state-sanctioned killings diminish public respect for human life, “brutalizing” the population. Bowers and Pierce further demonstrated that potential murderers do not identify with the person being executed. Instead, they identify their own enemies with the executed criminal, seeing the execution as a justification for killing those who have wronged them. Ultimately, Bowers realized that capital punishment is an incitement to violence rather than a deterrent.

There is ample reason to apply this “brutalization effect” to Israel and to con­clude that the proposed death penalty bill would only entice would-be mar­tyrs to attack Israelis. A renowned com­ment regard­ing the well-estab­lished rela­tion­ship between the death pen­alty and the desire for mar­tyr­dom comes from the 19th-cen­tury writer Eliphas Levi. He demon­strated a keen under­stand­ing of these dynam­ics when he wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaf­fold may be honored and praised as the head of a mar­tyr.”

Applying the brutalization effect and Levi’s wis­dom to mod­ern-day Israel, it becomes clear that a man­dat­ory death sen­tence for Palestini­ans who murder Jews will almost cer­tainly increase the num­ber of attacks. Rad­ical Islam­ist ter­ror­ists – like those who per­pet­rated mass murder on Octo­ber 7, 2023 – cel­eb­rate mar­tyr­dom in anti­cip­a­tion of the sup­posed rewards await­ing them in para­dise. They want to die for their cause. They prefer mar­tyr­dom in the actual act of killing, but if they can kill and then be placed on a ped­es­tal – lauded as her­oes facing the death pen­alty for their cause – then all the bet­ter. Their idealization of celebrity execution is espe­cially true in a world where – as they well know – so many individuals hate Israel for how it treats its non-Jew­ish cit­izens. If the death pen­alty were insti­tuted, such scen­arios would undoubtedly tran­spire. Why would Israel want to play into the hands of poten­tial ter­ror­ists in this way? On this purely prac­tical level, the pro­posed legis­la­tion is insane.

A far more severe pun­ish­ment for such individuals is incar­cer­a­tion, which forces terrorists to con­front what they have done while endur­ing the con­stric­tions of a max­imum-secur­ity prison every day. As a former Jew­ish prison chap­lain, I can per­son­ally attest to this harsh real­ity.

Proponents of this bill maintain that execut­ing ter­ror­ists will pre­vent future hostage-taking in prisoner swaps. What they fail to recog­nize is that Israel can avoid this out­come simply by chan­ging the law to for­bid includ­ing any­one dir­ectly involved in murder in any future pris­oner exchanges, without excep­tion. Such legis­la­tion would solve the prob­lem without cre­at­ing new mar­tyrs around whose memory other ter­ror­ists would assuredly rally.

An Existential Threat to the Safety of Jews Everywhere 

This perilous bill poses more pervasive dangers for Israel and the Jewish world. If the Knes­set were to enact it – lead­ing to the uncon­scion­able stain of exe­cu­tions darkening the moral fab­ric of Israeli soci­ety – anti­semitic extrem­ists would assuredly blame all the world’s Jews for this state-sponsored killing pro­gram. The death penalty would nearly fit it into their warped view of Israel – and, by exten­sion, Juda­ism – as a so-called “death cult.”

Just as this bill jeop­ard­izes the physical safety and secur­ity of Jews across the globe, it also threatens to per­man­ently mar what remains of Israel’s moral stand­ing among the more than 70% of the world’s nations that have abol­ished the death pen­alty in law and prac­tice. In today’s volat­ile polit­ical cli­mate, which already imper­ils the rule of law in Israel, this issue fur­ther nor­mal­izes the invoc­a­tion of state viol­ence and widens the gap between mod­ern Israel and the cent­ral Jew­ish value of the invi­ol­ab­il­ity of life.

To illustrate this, consider the probable future if Israel were to enact this legislation. As Ben Lynfield correctly predicts, the bill, once passed, would mark a “looming death certificate for the Israel that was.” After the shock of the bill’s passage had settled, global nations would realize, as Ron Dudai has compellingly written, that the far-right had cemented its ascendancy in Israeli society. Death cult claims would gain credence worldwide.  The bill would permanently decimate Israel’s already fragile moral compass in the minds of hundreds of millions of human beings and a majority of nations. As Israel would begin carrying out frequent executions of hundreds of prisoners, human rights activists the world over would continue to make legitimate comparisons with Iran and other global perpetrators of egregious judicial killings. The bill’s inherently racist nature – targeting only non-Jewish terrorists – would give only further weight to the argument that Israel is an apartheid state.

The thousands of mem­bers of “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty” have out­lined, ad nauseam, mul­tiple addi­tional reas­ons why this death pen­alty bill is, by defin­i­tion, an abom­in­a­tion. L’chaim delin­eated these points in a Hanukkah post, enu­mer­at­ing in detail “8 Reas­ons to Vote Against the Death Pen­alty this Hanukkah.” These include the fact that the death pen­alty viol­ates the human right to life, always con­sti­tutes tor­ture, risks execut­ing the inno­cent, is racist in its applic­a­tion, and – from Adolf Hitler to Don­ald Trump to Ben-Gvir – has been used as a polit­ical tool, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns. L’chaim has also illus­trated how Jew­ish tra­di­tion renders the death pen­alty vir­tu­ally impossible, and how many exe­cu­tion meth­ods are dir­ect Nazi legacies, includ­ing fir­ing squad, gass­ing, and lethal injec­tion. Famed death pen­alty abol­i­tion­ist Elie Wiesel best artic­u­lated L’chaim’s stance when he said of cap­ital pun­ish­ment – in the shadow of the Holo­caust – that “death should never be the answer in a civ­il­ized soci­ety.” Israeli law­makers should heed Wiesel’s mes­sage and recog­nize that exe­cu­tions are not the answer today, and never should be.

If they fail to do so, catastrophe assuredly awaits for Israel and all the Jewish world.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

Co-Founder: L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Cantor Michael Zoosman (he/him/his) is a Certified Spiritual Care Practitioner with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care/Association canadienne de soins spirituels (CASC/ACSS) and received his cantorial ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2008. He sits as an Advisory Committee Member at Death Penalty Action and is the co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” The work of L’chaim has received international press across the world, including from the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian, Fox News, News Nation, The Washington Post, Democracy Now!, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, The Jewish Forward, The Times of Israel, JTA, Newsweek, The Jurist and Counterpunch, among others. A Jewish prison chaplain and psychiatric hospital chaplain, he serves as a Spiritual Health Practitioner (Chaplain) for various mental health outreach teams, working with individuals in the community living with severe mental health disorders and addiction. He lives with his family in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is a progressive Zionist. His opinions are his own.