Q&A: Personal Legislation and Yigal Amir
Personal Legislation and Yigal Amir
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In your opinion, is the law that forbids granting a pardon to someone who murdered a prime minister a personal law? And if so, should the High Court of Justice strike it down the way it struck down the Tiberias Law?
Best regards,
Answer
I very much disliked the legislation directed against Yigal Amir, and more generally the hysteria and demonization surrounding him. But on the substance of the matter, it seems to me less personal than the Tiberias Law, for several reasons: in Tiberias, there did not seem to be any substantive reason at all to change an existing law. It was done not because of a certain person, but for a certain person. In Yigal Amir’s case, there was a reason, but nobody had imagined there would be someone here who would murder a prime minister until he committed the act. It was not done for him, but because of him.
Discussion on Answer
What is there to expand on? They turned him into Satan, the most terrible criminal there ever was, with personal legislation (more or less) and a wild campaign of incitement against him and against the right in general. In my view, he is immeasurably preferable to any other murderer who does such a thing for money or out of emotional turmoil. Here it was ideological, to save the state (in his view), and the victim was not just some random person but someone who, in his view, was about to bring destruction and mass killing. The man was prepared to give his life to save the people and the state.
I do not justify what he did, and he certainly must be punished. But the hysteria in the way people relate to him is a product of brainwashing and mass psychosis.
I understand.
Thank you.
What about Hitler? The war and mass murder that he carried out were also driven by ideology and by a desire to save humanity and the German people from those who, in his view, were contaminating the superior master race, destroying humanity, stabbing the German nation in the back, and endangering it.
Likewise, Hitler too was prepared to give his life, and indeed gave his life in a heroic act of suicide.
So here as well, should turning him into Satan, into a symbol of evil, into the most terrible criminal, and incitement against everything that smells of nationalism, and all the demonization—not happen?
Is he also preferable to any other murderer who does it for money? Or to some ordinary colonialist who exploits and enslaves another country?
Definitely. See column 372.
What do you mean by “the hysteria and demonization surrounding him”? Could the Rabbi expand a bit?