Syrian-Refugees-Christian
HOWARD EPSTEIN – IT’S BACK! CRUCIFIXION AT A PLACE NEAR YOU
In a deliciously ironical typo last week the Times of London announced “Saudi Arabia is posied to break last year’s record execution rate with the reported imminent mass crucifixion of juvenile protesters.” There can be little that is as decorous as a posy about capital punishment, but the added Saudi flourish, as reported by the Times, was the reference to crucifixion. I thought it was only the dreaded Da’esh who indulged themselves with wood and nails. Then what do I know?
Someone who should know about these things is British academic Professor Penny Green. The putative appointee to the United Nations Human Rights Council (“UNHRC”), as investigator into human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, is on record as saying that she cannot believe that the USA and the UK have not bombed Israel for human rights violations? Wow! What right does she have to come up with the ultimate definition of chutzpah? And is her brief so narrow that she cannot compare alleged Israeli human rights violations with those of its neighbours? She could get a clear view of Saudi Arabian territory from the Princess Hotel in Eilat. (No, no. Read on. I am serious.)
Come to think of it, even straight decapitation, which falls short of the post-death crucifixion variety, is not so great if you are the condemned. Not that the Saudis are alone. In their zeal to part heads from bodies, they compete with those who stretch necks painfully until they snap (Iran), fire bullets into the backs of necks (China and Chamastan) or despatch persons by lethal injection, with an audience (the USA, when they can source the fatal drugs in Europe).
Not only do the Iranians hang without the finesse of Albert Pierrepoint, the last British hangman – who took professional British pride in despatching the condemned as quickly and as painlessly as possible (although there is no reliable data on his second aim), celebrated in in a searing black comedy now playing in London, Hangmen – but also they run the Saudis a close race to the bottom, along with the Chinese, to see how far into four figures they can get with their annual executions tally.
The Times headline was: “Saudis set to break record for executions”. Well, whatever turns you on, I guess. In Israel, we are really hopeless in this department, merely proving that every rule has its exception, by hanging Adolph Eichmann in 1962. As we now know, from a brilliantly researched book, Eichmann Before Jerusalem, by German academic, Bettina Stangneth, who laid bare the banality of Hannah Arendt’s conclusion that Eichmann represented merely the banality of evil, rather than evil pure and simple, the decision so to dispatch him was flawed only in the absolute sense. Since then, and into the future, we can be sure that Israel has not and will not resort to capital punishment. Neither has the UK since 1962, and Hangmen shows dramatically the good sense in this: dead is dead and they ain’t coming back; even when mistakes are made.
As Wikipedia reports[1]:
The US television series, Making a Murderer, shows how Steven Avery, was arrested and convicted in 1985, of the sexual assault of Penny Beerntsen, despite having an alibi. After serving 18 years in prison, Avery was exonerated with the aid of the Innocence Project, when the DNA in the case was matched to another man guilty of crimes in the area.
Fortunately for Avery, rape does not carry the ultimate penalty.
It is unclear whether the DNA facilities that they may have in Iran, Saudi and China are applied to post‑conviction examination of the safety of the judgment and sentence to death of any of their thousands of condemned unfortunates. Possibly, that information would fail to fill a book with absolutely nothing between the covers – which is what they have between the ears. Indeed, all those countries that still have capital punishment on their statute books should know that it does not work as a deterrent, and that retribution is a base pursuit.
Nothing will persuade me that there is not a moral deficit in a country that kills its citizens (even its convicted-killer citizens) in cold blood. In both absolute and relative terms (including moral relativism – more is expected of Israelis/Jews than of the Arabs!), the Saudis cannot escape the image that they are wantonly cruel, however much the West panders to them for their oil; nor any more than the Americans (whose sanctimonious President is forever lecturing to us and our Prime Minister) can avoid being seen as crude and ineffectual with their retention of the whole range of possible eschatological[2] events from the electric chair, to the gas chamber, to the couch with its straps and syringes. Whether by noose, gun (and in the case of North Korea, reportedly on one occasion, an anti-aircraft gun), scythe or lethal injectors, these people are living in denial of their sullied image and of their incompetence as administrators of justice.
Every country likes to think that God is on its side, and that they have something unique to offer the world. Let them think. And while they are thinking, we know – we have the moral high ground. (UNHRC please note.)
The capital punishers are just too insecure to embrace the future, preferring instead to cling onto the past, rooted as they are in their addiction to medieval punishments. Yet in their heart of hearts they do know when they do wrong. Did not the Germans race to destroy the evidence of what went on in the extermination camps, even as the Red Army was breathing down their necks? And for balance, did not the Soviets try to pin the blame for the Katyn Forest massacre on the Germans? Human beings are, au fond, aware of right and wrong in the absolute and not merely the relative sense.
Now, as to Prof. Penny Green, I suggest that, if elevated to the post of investigator in that august and admired body, the UNHRC, she be treated as though she also won an Oscar, and invited for an escorted tour of “apartheid” Israel. Here, she could meet the Arab judge who sent a former President of Israel to prison for rape; the recently-appointed deputy commissioner of police, the second-highest rank in the Israel police force, Mr Jamal Hakrush, from the Arab town of Kafr Kana, near Nazareth; the commander of the crack Golani Brigade Colonel Ghassan Alian (OK, a Druze and not a Muslim Arab, but apartheid South Africa had rules for the segregation of all kinds of non-whites from whites, so let’s be consistent, Penny); and any one or more of the hundreds of Arab surgeons, doctors, and nurses working in the Israeli health sector.
Talking of Israeli hospitals, Penny could then do worse than pay an evening visit to just about any of our hospitals and see the place thronged with Arab families visiting their loved ones in their Israeli hospital beds. Next day, she could get a little retail therapy in our “supers” and kanyonim to see Arabs shopping as well as selling, side by side with Israeli shoppers and workers. Genüg, schön! We have heard all this nonsense about apartheid nation. We are as far from it as Johannesburg is from Jerusalem – on foot.
Before her visit to Eretz Yisrael, Prof. Green could do a little research. If she goes to:-
https://news.vice.com/article/inside-the-hospital-where-israeli-doctors-treat-syrian-patients
(although the url rather gives the game away) she can read for herself that:-
In nearly two and a half years, around 2,000 Syrians have been admitted to Israeli hospitals. While the vast majority are male — up to 90 percent at Ziv, the hospital closest to the border — there are women, too, and 17 percent of all patients are children.
Then again, she could Google: “hamas treated in israeli hospital”
and see:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-spokesmans-sister-treated-in-israeli-hospital/
or
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.559083 for:-
The seriously ill granddaughter of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh came to Israel for medical treatment.
One-year-old Amal Haniyeh, accompanied by her grandmother, crossed from Gaza into Israel to be seen by doctors at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikvah, according to reports based on Palestinian sources.
There is more. There are several Arab-owned and -operated fruit and veg shops in Tel Aviv’s suburbs. Who frequents them Prof. Green? Go and see for yourself. You think the Arab shopkeeper in Basel is waiting for his friends from Jaffa or Ramallah to come and buy? Dally an hour and see Israeli non-apartheid in action.
In the end, there is nothing wrong with our ineffectual Hasbarah that a couple of billion dollars (half from a handful of Jewish billionaires and the rest from the fiscally-sound state) would not fix to fund invitations to a whole slew of opinion-formers, a five year multi-media blitz on the great things about Israel, plus the establishment of some academic chairs in American universities to counter those financed by Iran. (Note: this last is urgent. See my earlier blog as to how anti-Semitism begins in the universities.)
Just as apologists for the Soviet Union – the communist fellow-travellers (known to the Soviets as “useful idiots”) – changed their views after visiting that benighted place, some real-time exposure to Israel in the flesh, would work wonders. List these people and invite them. Show them all of the above, plus Ma’alot, where 22 kids were killed at school in 1974 and Qiryat Shemona where 18 Israelis, including three children, were massacred the same year. Then, to bring matters up-to-date, take them to Sderot and let them sniff the tension in the air.
But round the tour off with a visit to the country’s universities, beaches and parks to see Arabs and Israelis studying, working, and playing cheek-by-jowl.
A penny for your thoughts now, Prof. Green (which is maybe all they are worth). All this is a long way from crucifixion, nachon?
© Howard Epstein – March 2016
[1] Extracted from: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Making_a_Murderer
[2] Eschatology: concerned with the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell.
Howard Epstein, LLB, is an English commercial lawyer of some 45 years’ standing. He still practices international commercial litigation on several continents. As such, he is articulate and voluble. Howard is also a staunch Zionist, having achieved aliyah in September 2005, after a lifetime as “an armchair Zionist”. His parents met at a Habonim function and he was raised with Zionism on a daily basis. He is well-read, knowledgeable and opinionated about Jewish and Israeli history and current affairs.
