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PMWATCH -
June 11, 2002 --A new low in the ever sinking moral bottom of
the pro-occupation corner here in the United States: this time,
calling for killing family members of suicide bombers. (See full
article below)
What is important to note in our struggle to get the media to do its job right
is the fact that this new low did not come out of nowhere, but was the logical,
almost inevitable next step in a chain of outrageous proposals that have been
sounded by opinion makers and respected leaders here in the United States:
support for the extrajuridical assassination of those Israel deems "potential
threats", regicide, shelling civilian areas as a way of punishing Palestinians
for supporting the Intifada, outrageous racist slurs that depicted Palestinians
as genetically predisposed to become suicide bombers, razing whole villages in
"retaliation", transferring Palestinian populations out of the West Bank and
Gaza and into other Arab countries, to name only the most brazen proposals.
(See full quotes in article cited in [1].)
And yet, not
one editorial has been written to denounce these proposals --
all of which are not only immoral but clearly incitement to commit
war crimes.
But worse
than not taking a stand and condemning the indefensible, is to
ignore them as business as usual rather than sit up and report
on them as troubling signs that need to be taken note of. Indeed,
how many stories in the mainstream did you read about Harvard
Law professor Alan Dershowitz's proposal to raze whole villages
to punish Palestinians for the violence, or about Majority Leader
Dick Armey's statement that he would like to see Palestinians
transferred out of the West Bank and Gaza?(See [1])
If the media will not do its moral duty of letting the world know about the ugly
underside of the pro-occupation forces here in the United States, at least do
YOUR duty of letting the media know, and that you hold them responsible for their
silence, so that they can never pretend that they did not know.
Fill in your
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Palestine
Media Watch
http://www.pmwatch.org
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Top Lawyer Urges Death For Families Of Bombers
Lewin: 'A Policy Born of Necessity'
By AMI EDEN
FORWARD STAFF
http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.06.07/news1.html
A prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader is calling for the
execution of family members of suicide bombers.
Nathan Lewin, an oft-mentioned candidate for a federal judgeship and legal
advisor to several Orthodox organizations, told the Forward that such a policy
would provide a much-needed deterrent against suicide attacks. Under the
proposal, which Lewin unveiled in the current issue of the opinion journal
Sh'ma, family members would be spared if they immediately condemned the bombing
and refused financial compensation for the loss of their relative. (Lewin's
article appears on the web at http://www.shma.com/may02/nathan.htm.)
While a 20-month spate of suicide bombings has been met in the Jewish community
with calls for increasingly Draconian preventive measures, Lewin appears to be
the first Jewish communal leader to approve publicly of the concept of executing
innocent civilians in the hopes of curbing terrorism.
"If executing some suicide-bomber families saves the lives of even an equal
number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is, I believe, ethically
permissible," wrote Lewin, who served as president of the International
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists and is a vice president of the
Orthodox Union. "It is a policy born of necessity the need to find a true
deterrent when capital punishment is demonstrably ineffective."
Lewin argued that the biblical injunction to destroy the ancient tribe of Amalek
serves as a precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are "ordinarily
unacceptable" in the face of a mortal threat. His proposal, however, was
rejected by an Israeli diplomat in New York, and discounted, in terms ranging
from mild to condemnatory, by a range of commentators, terrorism experts and
Jewish communal leaders from across the American political spectrum.
"The State of Israel is determined to respond to every Palestinian provocation,"
said Ido Aharoni, consul for media and public affairs at Israel's New York
consulate. "Israel's military approach is to pursue the perpetrators and those
who seek to carry out acts of terrorism against innocent Israelis. Within that
framework, Israel is trying to minimize, if possible to eliminate, the number of
innocent lives lost."
Several leading Jewish figures, including Harvard Law School professor Alan
Dershowitz, argued that the plan represented a legitimate if flawed attempt to
strike a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democratic norms.
But the proposal was strongly condemned by the head of the Reform movement,
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and the executive vice chairwoman of the Jewish Council for
Public Affairs, Hannah Rosenthal.
"The opinion is utterly reprehensible and totally contrary to the most
fundamental principles of the Jewish religious tradition and everything the
State of Israel has been about since its founding," said Yoffie, president of
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "I've said it, and everyone
realizes, that in a war all of our standards on civil liberties may not apply.
But to say that you need to make common-sense compromises is a long way from
saying we are going to kill innocent people to bring about deterrence."
Yoffie rejected Lewin's reference to Amalek as a possible justification for
killing innocents. He argued that for nearly 2,000 years talmudic sages and
other rabbinic commentators have argued that the lessons of Amalek could not be
applied to contemporary times. In an article that appeared in the Sh'ma journal
alongside Lewin's essay, Brandeis University Jewish studies professor Arthur
Green wrote, "I only wonder how long it will take [Lewin], by the force of this
proof-text, to go all the way and suggest that the Palestinian nation as a whole
has earned the fate of Amalek."
Green, former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, wrote that
his first desire upon reading Lewin's essay was to "tear my garments, as a sign
of mourning on hearing the desecration of God's name."
The criticisms of Lewin were taken one step further by Jeremy Burton, a member
of Sh'ma's advisory board and executive director of AMOS: The National Jewish
Partnership for Social Justice. Burton argued, in his own name, that the
attorney should now be blackballed from organized Jewish life, just as the late
Rabbi Meir Kahane was ostracized for calling for the mass deportation of Arabs
from Israel.
Rosenthal, whose organization serves the national network of local Jewish
community relations councils and a range of national organizations, said that
Jewish groups need to condemn any talk in their community of justifying the
killing of civilians. "I can't begin to tell you how many meetings I've been in
with colleagues across the country where the words of spokespersons for various
Muslim and Arab causes are being parsed," Rosenthal said. "We look at words and
decide which side of the line you are on."
Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League,
rejected the notion that Lewin should be elbowed out of communal life. They
argued that his proposal represented a legitimate attempt to forge a policy for
stopping terrorism. Foxman declined to take a stand on the actual proposal,
citing his policy of deferring to Jerusalem on Israeli security issues.
Though they declined to endorse the controversial proposal, top officials at the
O.U. and Agudath Israel of America, for whom Lewin has done legal work,
expressed sympathy for Lewin's efforts to curb what they described as an
unprecedented wave of suicide attacks in Israel. "[Lewin] is not a Kahanist; he
is not a nut," said Richard Stone, chair of the O.U.'s Institute of Public
Affairs. Stone noted that Lewin, a member of the institute's executive
committee, was not advocating the mass deportation of Arabs, rather a limited
method of fighting terrorists.
Rabbi William Altshul, headmaster of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, a
Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., told the Forward that he
did not regret the decision to honor Lewin this week at the school's annual
dinner. "I haven't read the article," Altshul said. "But Nat has always been
known for his outspoken opinions, and I respect him for it."
Even as several observers rejected the notion of blackballing Lewin, they
offered substantive critiques of his argument. Dershowitz, author of "Why
Terrorism Works" (Yale University Press, 2002), and terrorism researcher Steven
Emerson, who both favor the limited use of torture to extract information about
an impending terrorist attack, said that they balked at the execution of
innocent civilians. Still, Emerson added, "all bets are off" if terrorists were
to target thousands of people with non-conventional weapons.
Dershowitz argued that the same level of deterrence could be achieved by
leveling the villages of suicide bombers after the residents had been given a
chance to evacuate (an idea Lewin disparagingly likened to "using aspirin to
treat brain cancer").
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Orthodox Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J.,
a trained lawyer known for hawkish views on Israeli security issues, argued that
a policy of mass deportations, rather than executions, could serve as an
effective, but less deadly, deterrent against future attacks.
Several observers defended Lewin by noting that the United States killed tens of
thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Yoffie warned against such
parallels.
"If we are going to start looking for historical justifications for us to kill
innocent people, then we are destroying the moral basis of our argument, which
is ultimately our most effective weapon," the Reform leader said. "Don't go down
that road because it is wrong, self-defeating and dangerous for Israel."
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