Israel – Rabbi Aviner: Institute Death Penalty To Dissuade Terror

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    Israeli soldiers stops a Palestinian for a security check during a military operation to search for three missing Israeli teenagers near the West Bank city of Hebron, 15 June 2014. EPA/ABIR SULTANIsrael – One of the leading national-religious figures in the national-religious community Rabbi Shlomo Aviner called on Sunday for the imposition of the death penalty for Palestinians involved in terror activity as a way of preventing future kidnappings and other terrorist attacks.

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    Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Aviner, who heads the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem and is the rabbi of the Beit El settlement, said that the solution to the issue of kidnappings could not simply be particularistic, but must address root causes.

    “Terrorists need to know that it is not worthwhile to participate in terrorist activities and that if he does so he will pay dearly, that he and all those involved in the crime will pay dearly,” said the rabbi, who is part of the conservative wing of the national religious movement.

    Citing the medieval rabbi and codifier Maimonides, Aviner said that harsher measures of dissuasion should be used to deter terrorists.

    “Bowing down to terror only brings more terror… The death penalty should be used as a way of dissuading terrorism. At the moment, terrorists who are caught sit in jail, eat good food, study for university degrees and then are released and hailed as national heroes,” the rabbi said.

    Aviner also echoed a call made earlier on Sunday by another senior national-religious figure Rabbi Haim Druckman for people to stop hitch hiking.

    Hitchhiking is widely used around the settlements of Judea and Samaria as an alternative to public transport and the issue of whether or not to halt the practice has become sensitive, with some settlers viewing such a reaction as a capitulation to terrorism.

    Aviner said people should only hitch hike if know the driver or are 100 percent certain that it is safe.

    Speaking earlier to Galei Yisrael Radio, Rabbi Druckman, also called for people not to hitchhike because of the danger of kidnapping.

    “We must avoid hitchhiking,” Druckman said on Galei Yisrael radio Sunday afternoon. “We live in a certain reality, it didn’t begin today, but we need to overcome it and do everything not to enter into danger as much as we can.”

    The rabbi insisted he was not in any way blaming the three kidnapped boys for their abduction, but said that “in the reality we live in, and the difficulties we have we need to be careful.

    In addition to the prayer rally at the Western Wall on Sunday evening, two national-religious rabbinical associations, Tzohar and Beit Hillel, issued a joint statement on Sunday calling on religious and secular people alike to attend a prayer rally in Givat Shmuel, close to Tel Aviv.

    Chief Rabbi David Lau was expected to attend, along with Tzohar Chairman Rabbi David Stav, Beit Hillel Chairman Meir Nehorai, and other rabbinical leaders.

    Tzohar also issued a map detailing the times and places of prayer rallies around the country scheduled for Sunday night and Monday.

    On Saturday night, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, another leading figure in the conservative wing of the national religious movement and the chief rabbi of Safed, described the kidnappings as an attempt to hurt the Jewish People as a whole and said that the Palestinians wanted to wipe out the Jewish people.

    “This is why we all feel as one… everyone is hear as one person with one heart… they want to throw all of us into the sea, as they say explicitly from time to time,” Eliyahu told the media Saturday night after a prayer rally at the Western Wall.

    The rabbi prayed that the biblical verses ascribed to King David when he chased and defeated his enemies be fulfilled for the current circumstances, saying that “this verse should be fulfilled for us in our generation and that the soldiers of the IDF should chase them, and smite them and not leave a remnant of them.”

    Writing on his Facebook page on Saturday night, Deputy Minister for Religious Services Eli Ben-Dahan called for the “harshest possible measures” to be taken against the Palestinian Authority in response to the kidnapping, and called on the public to pray for the three boys.

    Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post


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    16 Comments
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    Brooklynhocker
    Brooklynhocker
    9 years ago

    Death penalty by predator drone. On the flip side the world looks at the Idf as terrorists so………

    Phineas
    Phineas
    9 years ago

    They are pretty much willing to die so I don’t see what the threat of a death penalty will accomplish.

    stamm
    stamm
    9 years ago

    who can know that they were hitchiking?

    hernor
    hernor
    9 years ago

    Kill the terrorists AND wrap them in pigskin so they can’t go to “heaven”.

    lazerx
    lazerx
    9 years ago

    of course he his correct, not only to put to death terrorists but also those who give them help and support.

    9 years ago

    Yeah!!! and death penalty to price tag terrorists too!!!!

    They are the ones that endanger Jews everywhere.

    9 years ago

    They killed 1700 soldiers in Iraq today. Whats the name for this?

    Yossi_Schochet
    Yossi_Schochet
    9 years ago

    The IDF needs to capture all members of the entire PA and Hamas government and their relatives. When we have around 1000 – offer to trade….

    enlightened-yid
    enlightened-yid
    9 years ago

    Death penalty for willing suicide bombers? Logic doesn’t come through fast enough for some.

    BoruchN
    BoruchN
    9 years ago

    This won’t stop so fast, tragically. The govt. and people are weak. This might happen again. The enemy is NOT afraid of The Israeli Government — pussycats.

    9 years ago

    The death penalty in Israel, would be a bad idea. Even after Eichmann (y’mach shimo levracha), was convicted and sentenced to death, there were many calls for leniency for him. In fact, even the Central Conference of American Rabbis sent a petition to President Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, requesting that he be sentenced to life. After Eichmann was executed, pogroms and retaliation against the Jews in South America and other countries took place. The death penalty has become a highly charged issue, even in the USA. It has been abolished in Europe and the former Soviet Union. Most states in the USA do not carry it out. With the few states that do carry it out, the appeals can take up to thirty years. There is someone on death row in Florida, who has been there for 35 years! It is mainly used in Arab countries, and in Asian countries. Further, I don’t think that it would serve as a deterrent, against terrorists.