I never imagined in my life that I would entertain such radical thoughts as those that have been swirling around my head recently. These are thoughts that make me question my own principles, my values, and the very essence of what it means to be human. They gnaw at me, filling me with a deep sense of sorrow, anger, and despair.
I have spent my entire adult life in the caring profession as a physician – 43 years to date of trying my best to help and to heal people. My duty has always been to preserve life, to alleviate suffering, and to mend broken bodies and fractured spirits. I have held hands with the dying, comforted the bereaved, and fought against illness and pain with every fiber of my being.
Whilst not particularly liberal in my politics, I have never been what one might call right-wing. I have always believed in justice, in morality, and in the rule of law. Yet, I find myself contemplating something I never thought possible: whether Israel should enforce the death penalty for terrorists. There! I have said it. And it does not feel good. It does not feel just. It does not feel like the world I once believed in.
How it feels is wrong and immoral. It is not man’s place to end another person’s life. And yet… I cannot suppress the overwhelming fury and grief that consume me when I see the horrors that have unfolded before our eyes. Hamas has sullied our souls.
When I watch the hostages being released among a frenzy of baying, masked, gun-wielding terrorists, paraded like trophies before a crowd that cheers their suffering, my stomach turns. When I see the few clips of videos I have dared to watch from October 7 – and I have not seen the worst of them by any means – I feel an indescribable pain that twists my soul.
Hostages returned in deplorable condition
WHEN I saw Eli Sharabi’s gaunt face – so hollow, so empty, so wasted – it was a face that would not have looked out of place at the liberation of Belsen. He had been reduced to a mere shadow of a human being, a living skeleton, stripped of dignity and hope. And then, the cruelest blow of all: he did not know his wife and daughters had been slaughtered. What kind of evil allows a man to live in such agony, unaware that his loved ones are gone?
When I looked into the empty eyes of Or Levy, a man whose wife was also murdered on that infamous day, I saw a void that could never be filled. A man who had been robbed not just of his beloved but of his very reason for being. And when I saw Ohad Ben Ami, his body so frail he could barely walk, I felt something within me break.
I begin to ask myself: do the perpetrators of these crimes deserve to be in this world at all?
Their continued presence contaminates society to the degree that perhaps their actions mean they forfeit the right to be called human. And if they are no longer human, do they deserve the rights we afford to humanity? Do they deserve the mercy they denied their victims?
Israeli law allows the death penalty for certain crimes – treason, genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people during wartime. Yet, the only execution that has ever been carried out in Israel’s history was in 1962 when Adolf Eichmann was hanged for his role in orchestrating the Holocaust.
Yes, Eichmann was responsible for millions of deaths. And these vile Hamas animals have been responsible for “only” thousands. But murder is not a numbers game.
Are the actions of those who carried out the October 7 massacres – who raped, beheaded, burned, and maimed innocent men, women, and children for one reason only: that they were Jews or Israelis – any different in qualitative terms from what the Nazis did? If this is not a crime against humanity, if this is not a crime against the Jewish people, then what is?
IN SOME ways, Hamas is worse than the Nazis. As horrifying as it is to say, at least some of the Nazis, even as they carried out their genocide, numbed themselves with alcohol and drugs, drowning in the abyss of their own evil.
These monsters, however, celebrate their atrocities. They take pride in their slaughter. They film their brutality and share it with the world, gleefully boasting about their heinous acts. They revel in their savagery, swearing to repeat their bloodshed again and again if given the chance.
And I am beginning to believe that they should not be given even half a chance.
By imprisoning them, we remain responsible for their welfare. We house them, we feed them, we keep them alive – all at the expense of a society they have vowed to annihilate. Why? What justice is there in that? They are undeserving of any welfare, of any protection, of any life.
Worse still, they become pawns in the grotesque and tragic bargaining that takes place – exchanged like currency for our innocent hostages, encouraging further kidnappings and atrocities. How many times must we endure the horror of our loved ones being snatched from us, knowing that their captors will one day be set free to kill again?
And perhaps the most damning truth of all: when they are released, they go back to the same terrorist activities and worse. Yahya Sinwar is the prime example – a man who was imprisoned, who should never have seen the light of day again, but was released in a prisoner exchange and went on to mastermind the very attacks that have shattered our world.
How many more lives must be lost before we acknowledge that our leniency is a death sentence for our own people?
OVER THE years, there have been calls from various sources to enforce the death penalty, the last serious attempt being in March 2023 when a bill was introduced in the Knesset to mandate execution for those deemed to be terrorists.
There will be many in this country who would never have contemplated such a move in the past but who are now reconsidering their position – who, like me, are thinking the unthinkable.
I am deeply saddened to say that I am one of them.
This is not who I wanted to be. This is not the world I wanted to live in. I wanted to believe in redemption, in justice, in humanity. But how do you hold on to those ideals when you are staring into the face of absolute evil?
The grief and rage are all-consuming. I do not recognize myself in this moment, and I do not know if I ever will again.
But I do know one thing: I do not want to live in a world where monsters walk free, laughing at the suffering they have caused, knowing they will never face true justice.
Maybe, just maybe, the unthinkable is the only answer left.
The writer is a rabbi and physician who lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya. He is a co-founder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism.