A Prominent American Jew Calls For Killing Bombers' Families to Deter Further Resistance to Israeli Occupation

18/06/2002| IslamWeb

HIGHLIGHTS: Lewin Suggests Families of Bombers Should be Executed Unless They Denounce Bomber & Refuse Financial Compensation||Analysts Say Suggestion Indicates Shift in U.S. Jewish Communities Discourse||Some Jewish Quarters Appear to Find the Suggestion Ethically Acceptable|| STORY: A prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader has raised a storm with a call for the execution of family members of Resistance bombers as a way of deterring future attacks.(Read photo caption)

Nathan Lewin -- who has been mentioned as a candidate for a federal judgeship and is legal advisor to Orthodox organizations -- suggests that Israeli and American authorities issue a warning that immediate families of bombers will be executed. They would be spared if they immediately denounce their kin's act and refuse any financial compensation. "If this kind of announcement had been made, it would have deterred 95 percent of the bombings," he told an Israeli daily.

"Normally you hear something like this and you tend to ignore it because it comes from a fringe element," said Reform movement leader Rabbi Eric Yoffie. "For someone like [Lewin] to make this kind of proposal leaves me horrified and deeply distressed."

Yosef Abramowitz, the publisher of Sh'ma, a monthly magazine in which Lewin sets out his proposal, said it is indicative of a shift-taking place in the U.S. Jewish community's discourse. "You hear a lot of surprising thoughts, brought about by the terrible anguish and rage felt today," he said. "When you have someone of such prominence willing to go on record, we thought there would be an opportunity to openly discuss what has only been whispered."

Jeremy Burton, executive director of AMOS: The National Jewish Partnership for Social Justice said Lewin's proposal should be repudiated. "We need to do some deep reflection about who we honor and give positions of respect and leadership," said Burton, who is on Sh'ma's advisory board and opposed publishing Lewin's article. "This approach strikes me as reprehensible and beyond the parameters of morality in Jewish ethical thinking."

Lewin acknowledges his proposal is "no easy ethical question." But he adds, "If executing some, so-called, suicide-bomber families saves the lives of even an equal number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is ethically permissible ... It is a policy born of necessity -- the need to find a true deterrent when capital punishment is demonstrably ineffective."

PHOTO CAPTION

Napoleon, the dictator pig in Orwell's "Animal Farm" would surely squeal with approval of Lewin's hate Resistance deterrence suggestion. Napoleon would be pleased with Lewin's ugly thoughts because such thinking will centralize more police power in the dangerous Israeli government policy which is already implementing 'collective punishment against the Palestinians. The line of thought adopted by Lewin will fulfill every dictator's dream of punishing his enemies and rewarding those loyal to him, which is in many ways Washington's policy in its current pursuit of the war against so-called 'Terror'.