(JTA) — Don’t seek the death penalty for the Pittsburgh synagogue gunman. That’s the message from a spiritual leader at one of the three congregations that share the Tree of Life synagogue building to U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, whose New Light Congregation lost three worshippers in the October attack by Robert…
The California Supreme Court unanimously overturned a white supremacist’s death sentence after they found that prosecutors tainted the jury’s deliberations by focusing on his Nazi tattoos, The Washington Post reported. Jeffrey Scott Young, who at the time was affiliated with neo-Nazi groups like the Aryan Brotherhood, was on trial for murder in 2006. He was…
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s parliament gave preliminary approval on Wednesday for legislation that would make it easier for a court to pass a death sentence on assailants convicted of murder in attacks classified as terrorism. Israeli military courts – which handle cases involving Palestinians in the occupied West Bank – already have the power to…
We, the undersigned Rabbis across denominations, express our opposition to the use of the death penalty in America. As Jews and citizens, we believe that governments must protect the dignity and rights of every human being. By using the death penalty, our country fails to live up to this basic requirement. Too often, the wrong…
The death penalty for murder in a terror act that incoming Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman seeks will only apply to military courts, said a Likud source involved in the talks to bring Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party into the governing coalition. Such a move, which Lieberman demands if his party is to join the government, would…
Israel’s Knesset voted down a bill that would allow judges to more easily sentence a terrorist to death. By a vote of 94-6, the bill was rejected in its first reading on Wednesday. The six votes came from members of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which proposed the measure, The Jerusalem Post reported. In the March…
Remember the name Bezalel Smotrich. Yes, the same far-right activist who was once reportedly held by the Shin Bet on suspicion of endangering human life, malicious damage, membership in a banned organization and sedition. The same Smotrich who once organized the “march of beasts,” parading donkeys through Jerusalem streets to protest Gay Pride parades, and…
The ruins of a gas chamber at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp / Getty Images Lying at the heart of every political position I hold is an undying faith in human fallibility. Not only might we get things wrong, we will get things wrong – just as we got things wrong last week and last…
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