Unfortunately, Israel has imbibed the ideas of the pseudo-intellectual European Left, with its flawed logic and neurotic reasoning. The four main arguments against capital punishment can easily be refuted by any thinking teenager. It is only when you get brainwashed at a university do you find excuses for cold-blooded murderers paying the ultimate fair penalty.
Fraudulent Arguments:
- An innocent person could get executed. Although no one has ever proven that such an error has actually occurred, it is the only argument with any validity. However, many more innocent people get killed in automobile accidents, so perhaps we should stop driving. People fall from tall buildings, so perhaps we should stop building skyscrapers. People die from taking drugs, so perhaps we should stop making those tiny pills that save so many lives. Perhaps the police should stop carrying guns. Innocent people have been shot accidentally in crossfire.The reality is that everything in life has risk associated with it, and in virtually every circumstance, innocent people will die. Unfortunately, that is part of life. The trick is to make the risk as small as possible, which includes making cars safer, buildings safer, drugs safer, cops safer and the court trial system as safe and accurate as possible. Societal laws are all about minimizing mistakes, because in virtually every case, from building codes to traffic laws, a mistake can take innocent lives.
- “The death penalty does not accomplish anything, because you cannot bring back the dead person.” Of course it accomplishes something. In most cases, it revives the outlook and provides closure for the relatives of the dead person. There is immense relief. Just ask a mother whose daughter has become fertilizer, while her murderer watches cable TV and lifts weights in prison. We should be more concerned with the families of the victims, than with the murderer and his relatives.Even more profound, the death penalty ends the murderer’s “essence” on earth. According to Judaism, when someone is truly evil, you say the wordsÊ”y’mach shmo”Êafter his name, which means “may his name be erased.” A murderer who lives, even in prison, still has a name, is interviewed on TV, has a web site like Charles Manson, emails people and even gets married while behind bars. Only when “his name is erased from life” does he stop enjoying it and will society stop hearing from him.
- Capital Punishment is state murder. Who are we to take a life?” Only the well educated can call capital punishment murder. There are two words for the act—killing and murder. Murder is taking an innocent life and killing is usually associated with a moral act, like in war, a policeman shooting a sniper or capital punishment. Killing Adolf Hitler would have been one of the most moral acts of the 20th century. The same act can be moral or evil depending on its context. Just like rape and love-making are the same act; one is truly evil and the other is one of the most beautiful acts in which a human can engage. So too, there is moral killing, and immoral killing, which is called murder.
In the final analysis, unless one believes in a God who tells us what to do with murderers, all punishments become intellectual exercises in higher education, which provide valid reasoning for somehow releasing a Joseph Stalin from his just desserts.
Amazingly, there are two words for that very same act in the Hebrew Bible, just like in English, murder and kill. The 10 Commandments says,do not “murder” not do not kill.
4.Minorities are disproportionately executed.” This is simply a lie developed by the anti-capital punishment crowd. Minorities are disproportionately represented on death row, but not executed disproportionately. The true statistic is that “poor” murderers are disproportionately executed over “rich” murderers like OJ Simpson and Robert Durst. Fancy, expensive lawyers who could probably win a plea bargain for Pol Pot are the real issue. We should mete out the death penalty fairly, not drop it.