Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.

– Eliphas Levi, 19th-century writer.

Up is down. Black is white.

The death penalty deters murder?

The death penalty has never been shown to be a deterrent to murder in a civil society. In fact, there have been cases in the United States where individuals have opted for the death sentence rather than continuing with appeals that could possibly prevent execution. An execution is a release of sorts, a ticket home, an escape from the misery of dying on death row, alone and with nothing.

In Israel, a mandatory death sentence for Palestinians who murder Jews will almost certainly increase the number of attacks. This is particularly true because radical Islamist terrorists celebrate martyrdom to receive the supposed rewards awaiting them in paradise. They want to die for the cause.

The preference is for martyrdom in the act of killing, but if they can kill and then be put on a pedestal to be lauded as heroes facing the death penalty for their cause, then all the better, even more so if they get to become celebrities in a world where Israel is hated because of how it treats non-Jewish citizens. If the death penalty is instituted, these scenarios could happen. Why would Israel want to encourage potential terrorists? On a purely practical level, this proposed legislation is insane.

A far harsher punishment is incarceration. Let perpetrators consider what they have done and why they endure the constrictions of a maximum-security prison every day. The notion that executing terrorists will prevent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps is a fair concern. To avoid this, simply change the law to forbid including those directly involved in murder in any future prisoner exchanges, with no exceptions. There. Problem solved.

The last and, almost only, time Israel implemented the death penalty was in 1962 against Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution. On behalf of the thousands of members of the organization we co-founded L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, and Death Penalty Action, we implore the good people of Israel to ensure that this remains the case.

We ask that you petition all members of the Knesset to vote against the currently proposed death penalty bill for convicted terrorists. Blocking passage of this bill will guarantee that the delusion of “deterrence” will not fool hearts and minds like a false mirage of justice.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s morally reprehensible quest to institute executions in the Jewish state will only further harden the hearts of Hamas, whose members regularly employ executions themselves, to the world’s horror, as do other enemies of Israel.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels recently sentenced 17 people to death for allegedly spying on behalf of Israel and others. Iran has executedover 1,500 human beings in 2025 alone. If Israel were to institute the death penalty, it would be on a par with regimes it despises.

Many of the members of L’chaim, including these authors, are direct descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors. More than most people, we know that one cannot conflate capital punishment with the Shoah. And yet, for many L’chaim members, it is the shadow of the Holocaust that underpins our firm rejection of the death penalty in all cases, including for convicted Hamas terrorists, as well as the Capital Jewish Museum shooter in Washington, D.C. and the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shooter. It is the legacy of the Holocaust that reaffirms our commitment to the inalienable right to life.

What’s more, one cannot escape the irony of the fact that the execution method that Israel now seeks to use against convicted terrorists is the lethal injection. This form of killing is a direct Nazi legacy, first implemented in human history by the Third Reich as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol used to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Dr. Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, administered that program.

Elie Wiesel resolutely said of capital punishment: “Death is not the answer.” By the end of his life, Wiesel publicly said that he made no exception to this rule, concluding: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms.”

In the wake of the Holocaust and the unparalleled horrors of the 20th century, more than 70 percent of the nations of the world have recognized the inviolability of the human right of life and have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

Despite the horrors Israel has endured at the hands of Hamas, as a state that is seen as representing twenty-first-century Judaism, it must continue to reflect the value of human life. It is imperative that Israel remains a part of civilized humanity by never crossing this moral red line.

This first appeared in Haaretz.

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