Nov. 1
ISRAEL:
Israeli Death Penalty the Answer for Hardened Terrorists
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, previously counted among the
toughest leaders in the civilized world, has become softer than the secretary
general of the United Nations.
Netanyahu recently ransomed a kidnapped Israeli soldier whom Hamas had held
hostage since 2006. The price for Sgt. Gilad Shalit's freedom? Israel will free
1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Many are hardened terrorists with Israeli and even
American blood on their hands.
This colossal breach of justice for these victims injects this toxic population
back into society. Some of them almost certainly will express their gratitude
with machine guns and dynamite.
The first wave of 477 prisoners swapped for Shalit include at least 3
terrorists who have slaughtered Americans.
Ahlam Tamimi conspired to attack a Sbarro restaurant on Aug. 9, 2001. This
Jerusalem suicide bombing murdered 15 — including Passaic, N.J.'s Shoshana
Greenbaum, 31 — and wounded 130 more.
Now carefree in Jordan, despite 16 life sentences, Tamimi has no regrets.
"It was a calculated act, performed with conviction and faith in Allah," she
told a Hamas website. "Why should I repent?"
Abd al-Hadi Rafa Ghanim of Islamic Jihad grabbed the wheel of a Jerusalem-bound
bus and steered into a ravine in 1989, killing 11 (including Philadelphia's
Rita Susan Levin, 39) and injuring 27. Ghanim was serving 16 life sentences.
Ibrahim Muhammad Yunus Dar Musa received 17 years for, among other things,
helping to murder Detroit native David Applebaum, 51, and his daughter, Nava,
20, on her wedding eve. 5 others were killed and at least 50 wounded in a Sept.
9, 2003 suicide bombing at Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel.
Abd al-Aziz Yussuf Mustafa Salehi famously waved his bloody hands from the
window of a Ramallah police station, in which he and other members of a mob
fatally flogged and killed Israeli reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yosef
Avrahami. These Oct. 2000 murders earned Salehi a life sentence.
Maedh Waal Taleb Abu Sharakh, Majdi Muhammad Ahmed Amr, and Fadi Muhammad
Ibrahim al-Jaaba of Hamas planned a March 5, 2003 suicide bombing of Haifa's
Bus 37, killing 17 and wounding 53. These murderers received 19, 19, and 18
life sentences, respectively.
Nasir Sami Abd al-Razzaq Ali al Nasser-Yataima planned a Passover 2002 suicide
bombing that killed 30 and wounded 140 at Netanyahu's Park Hotel, earning him
29 life terms.
Ignoring 469 other prisoners released on Oct. 18, Israel soon will free another
550 dangerous characters — all to rescue 1 Israeli soldier.
With all due respect and mercy for Shalit, this was a stupid, disproportionate,
and likely deadly decision.
As Nadav Shragai wrote in Jerusalem Viewpoints, an estimated 50 % of terrorists
in previous Israeli prisoner swaps and "goodwill gestures" subsequently
executed, plotted, or supported terror assaults.
In fact, Israel previously freed participants in the aforementioned Passover
massacre and Cafe Hillel bombing. Israeli officials twice discharged Ramez Sali
Abu Salmim. He eventually blew himself up in Cafe Hillel.
In Oct. 2010, the U.S.-Israeli Almagor Terror Victims Association counted at
least 30 attacks involving Islamic extremists liberated by Israel's government.
Almagor reports that 177 people have been murdered, and many others injured, in
attacks that Israel could have prevented simply by keeping these savages caged.
While Israel now has complicated its own anti-terrorist vigilance, America
cannot rest, either. Some of these freed killers will remain in Israel, the
West Bank, and Gaza, from which they can attack Israelis. That would be bad
enough.
Some of the more adventurous terrorists, however, might use their new and
undeserved freedom to target Americans. As Israel's chief benefactor and
staunchest ally, why not teach the Yanks a lesson by, say, blasting a U.S. bank
branch elsewhere in the Middle East? Why not bomb Americans in Long Island or
Los Angeles?
Rather than meaningless "life sentences," Israel immediately needs to enact and
implement the death penalty. Terrorists neither can be demanded, nor exchanged,
nor kill again while dead.
(source: Deroy Murdock, Newsmax.com)
ANTIGUA:
Attorney wants death penalty abolished
Human rights attorney Anslem Clouden is calling for the removal of the death
penalty describing it as “indeed cruel, inhumane (and) degrading punishment.”
Clouden, who recently returned from an abolitionist conference in Spain, said
capital punishment was used by plantation owners during slavery as a means of
terrorizing slaves and bringing them into subjection.
“When the slaves were hung in the squares of the plantations…it (was) to
frightened people psychologically into submission.”
Grenada is one of two countries in the region being called “defacto
abolitionists”, despite the fact that it has not executed anyone since 1978.
However the sentence of death remains on the law books here.
Clouden, who has been practicing law here for the past 33 years, said as an
abolitionist he has accepted that “for every crime there should be a
punishment”.
However he believes the root cause of crime is not from an innate propensity in
a person to be violent but from the failures of the political, economic and
judicial system.
“This violence is rooted in the economic disparity that exists in our region.
It is morally and ethically wrong to hang someone” and is advocating a reform
of the laws and the establishment of a juvenile court system to deal with young
offenders.
He said that while Grenada is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child, it is still without a functioning juvenile court or
correction facility for teenagers who would have gotten themselves on the wrong
side of the law.
“It is lamentable that a young man should be sent to Her Majesty’s Prison; a
prison that is overcrowded, where you have all kinds of licentious behavior and
for the most part is not suited for young people. But there is no alternative.
“While he is there, there is no facility for rehabilitation and reform. After
two years, he returns to society and can’t find a job because he now has a
criminal record and the stigma that goes with it.”
The Madrid conference which convened mid-October and dubbed the “Great step to
contribute and accelerate the process of stopping and abolishing the death
penalty in the Caribbean”, was attended by human rights activists,
non-governmental organizations, and Caribbean individuals and organizations.
The main purpose of the conference was to develop strategies in support of the
abolition of the death penalty in the Caribbean.
13 countries of the region still have the death penalty on their law books and
St. Kitts/Nevis was the most recent country to carry out an execution in 2008.
(source: Antigua Observer)
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