Denne har eg henta frå http://www.shma.com/may02/nathan.htm
Dette er ikkje den vulgære fascismen, men den som er kledd i dress og slips.
Nathan Lewin er høgsterettsadvokat, og titulerer seg slik:
Nathan Lewin is a Washington, D.C. attorney who frequently appears before
the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a member of the Adjunct Faculties of George
Washington Law School (Jewish Civil Law) and Columbia Law School (Supreme
Court Litigation).
Han har ei enkel løysing på sjølvmordsbombeproblemet: At ein tek livet av
familien til sjølvmordsbombaren stom straff.
Detering Suicide Killers
By Nathan Lewin
Introduction We are now faced with an apparently intractable, increasingly
ferocious Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This expanded issue of
Sh'ma--offered only in part on-line--offers a series of perspectives on how
American Jews might talk about the crisis. Some of the reflections might
shock. These are shocking times, and that some are now thinking the
unthinkable might well unsettle us. But the only way out of the present
quagmire is to listen intently, to weigh previously inconceivable options,
and to arrive at conclusions that contain just enough morality and just
enough pragmatism. As usual, the opinions expressed in these articles do not
necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors or the Sh'ma board. Feel free
to participate in the conversation on-line.
The terrorists have a new indispensable weapon - created by Yasser Arafat
and re-fined by Osama bin Laden - in their war against Israel and the United
States. It is the walking bomb - the suicide killer. Weighty ethical issues
affect how a civilized society can deter the murderer who is ready to
sacrifice his or her own life.
Organized societies deter criminals by imposing punishments that demonstrate
to potential offenders that crime does not pay. In theory, capital
punishment should prevent all crime by those who calculate the consequences
if they are caught. The death penalty is so drastic that its mere
availability should deter a potential offender, even if it is rarely
implemented. The Torah prescribes capital punishment for a wide range of
offenses, but a Sanhedrin that executed once in seven years (or in seventy)
was called "destructive." Mishna Makkot 1:10
In the United States, we go through extreme contortions before we carry out
an execution. For several years, the Supreme Court blocked all capital
punishment, and even now it gives extra-careful treatment to cases that
involve the death penalty. It is better, we are told, to avoid executing one
innocent person than to kill one hundred cold-blooded murderers.
That calculus works so long as death is a true deterrent. Terrorism, as
practiced by Arafat's thugs and by bin Laden's acolytes, has thrown that
assumption to the wind. Drastic rethinking of the theory of deterrence is
needed when terrorists successfully recruit young men and women to commit
suicide while killing dozens or thousands of innocent civilians.
Terrorism will not be shut down until the individual terrorist is
effectively deterred. Israel's campaign of "targeted assassinations" has
tried to prevent suicide bombings by swift nonjudicial execution of known
organizers of such deadly attacks. Experience has shown, however, that
others take the place of those executed, and the supply of those willing to
give up their lives has not dwindled. And Israel's policy of retaliating
against political targets - i.e., Arafat's headquarters or Palestinian arms
caches - has been a total failure.
What threat will effectively deter the individual who is prepared to die so
long as he can take many Jews (or, since September 11, many Americans) with
him? Studies of Palestinian suicide bombers and of those who, knowing their
death was imminent, carried out the September 11 horror indicate that most
were closely knit to their families - to parents, brothers, and sisters.
Indeed, these family members routinely give press briefings extolling the
suicide killers, and they are the recipients of financial bounties from
supportive Moslem charities and governmental organizations.
What if Israel and the United States announced that henceforth the
perpetrators of all suicide attacks would be treated as if they had brought
their parents and brothers and sisters with them to the site of the
explosion? Suicide killers should know that they will take the lives of not
only themselves and the many people they don't know (but nonetheless hate)
in the crowd that surrounds them when they squeeze the button that detonates
their bomb, but also the lives of their parents, brothers, and sisters. The
nation whose civilians are killed or maimed should, by "targeted
assassinations" or other means, be free promptly to execute the immediate
relatives of the suicide bombers. This consequence would, I believe, deter
most suicide killers - many of whom now anticipate that not only will they
be rewarded in a world-to-come, but that their immediate families will be
honored and granted lavish benefits on this earth.
I hear anguished screams from an array of civil-libertarians. How can a
civilized society - and particularly a people following the ethical
principles of the Torah - justify killing innocent family members because
their relative has gone on a demented mission? World opinion will surely
condemn any such policy, even if - as I believe is absolutely essential - it
is implemented only after full and repeated warnings in advance to
prospective suicide bombers. Critics will cite the obscene Nazi policy of
executing families and entire communities in retaliation for individual acts
of resistance. How would the elimination of a suicide killer's family differ
from this indefensible Hitlerian practice?
This is no easy ethical question, but it is not as one-sided as may
initially appear. Weigh the relative "innocence" of these family members
against the "innocence" of the Israeli adolescents and youngsters killed by
suicide bombers at discotheques and cafés or against the "innocence" of
those who happened to be on high floors of the World Trade Center on the
morning of September 11. 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. It is a policy born of necessity - the
need to find a true deterrent when capital punishment is demonstrably
ineffective.
How does it differ from Nazi retaliation against families of those Hitler
classified as criminals? The Nazis punished the families of resisters who
attacked evil Nazi generals or other governmental functionaries, not the
innocent mothers, children, and teenagers whom the suicide killers target.
And the Nazis did not claim, as Israel and the United States plainly can,
that punishing the perpetrator for his own "crime" would not prevent its
repetition.
And how "innocent," in fact, are the families of the suicide killers? An
"escape hatch" might enable them to avoid the consequences if, promptly
after their son's or brother's suicide mission, they surrender to the
authorities, publicly condemn the crime, and reject any financial or other
benefit from it. The policy of family retaliation would also encourage
family members to dissuade brothers, sisters, or children who appear to be
gravitating toward suicide missions.
Finally, can Jewish law and tradition accept this seeming punishment of
innocents? The Torah commanded the total eradication - including women and
children - of certain nations (Amalek being a singular illustration) because
of the continuing threat its members presented to the survival of Israel.
When there is no other deterrent, self-defense entitles one to take measures
that are ordinarily unacceptable.
The extremely modest proposals that some people are now willing to accept -
national identity cards and roving eavesdrops (and even the "automatic"
destruction of Palestinian villages that Alan Dershowitz proposed in The
Jerusalem Post of March 11, 2002) - are the proverbial use of aspirin to
treat brain cancer. They may occasionally disrupt terrorist plans but will
have no major impact on the terrorist threat. Effective prevention will come
only with effective individual deterrence of potential suicide killers.
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