DC lawyer calls for death of innocents

["Alex LoCascio" <alexlocascio@xxxxxxxx>]

Note: forwarded message attached.

----- Original Message -----
From: Crystal Sylvia <crystalsylvia@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 19:26:37 -0700 (PDT)
To: anticapitalists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [LeftTurn] Fwd: [dcsgp] Top DC lawyer urges death for families of 
Palestinian suicide bombers


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• To: anticapitalists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [LeftTurn] Fwd: [dcsgp] Top DC lawyer urges death for families of Palestinian suicide bombers
• From: Crystal Sylvia <crystalsylvia@xxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 19:26:37 -0700 (PDT)
• Delivered-to: alexlocascio:mail.com@mail.com
• Delivered-to: mailing list anticapitalists@yahoogroups.com
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>
> [Forwarded by Justine McCabe of the US Green
> Party's International Committee, who adds "This
> man is apparently a close buddy of Supreme Court
> Justice Antonin Scalia with whom he went to law
> school." The article printed below is from
> Forward <http://www.forward.com>, a progressive
> Jewish newspaper based in New York. -- Scott]
>
>
> * * * * *
>
>
> A prominent D.C. attorney, Nathan Lewin, has
> written an article stating that the family
> members of Palestinian suicide bombers should be
> executed in order to prevent suicide bombings
> against Israel.
>
> This attorney holds many prominent positions in
> DC within the legal community (he is a potential
> candidate for federal judgeships) and within many
> Jewish organizations as well. The ADL refuses to
> condemn him or his statements.
>
> Please e-mail the following D.C. Bar Associations
> and also the ABA Bar Association and tell them
> that calling for the slaughter of innocent
> civilians is juxtaposed to the notions of
> justice, civil and liberties and rights that the
> American legal system is supposedly built upon.
> Mention that is the job of lawyers to uphold the
> letter of the law, even when defending people or
> positions that lawyers might be inherently
> opposed to and that calling for the death of
> innocent people is a slap in the face to our
> American legal system and that Mr. Lewin should
> be investigated immediately and removed from the
> ABA for using his position as a lawyer to call
> for the murder of innocent civilians:
>
> ethics@xxxxxxxxx
> executive.office@xxxxxxxxx
> membership@xxxxxxxxx
> EthicSearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ctrprofresp@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> Also, the most important person to contact is the
> head of the American Bar Association's
> Professional Responsibility board in the District
> of Columbia. There is no e-mail address available
> for her, so please write her a letter and send it
> to her immediately. If Palestinian-American
> professors will be terminated for their jobs for
> expressing their views on the state of Israel,
> then Jewish-American lawyers should be held
> accountable for using their profession as a
> medium to call for the slaughter of innocent
> civilians:
>
> Joyce E. Peters
> Bar Counsel
> Board on Professional Responsibility
> District of Columbia
> Building A, Room 101
> 515 - 5th Street NW
> Washington, DC 20001-2797
> Tel: 202/638-1501
>
> -----------------------
>
> [From Forward.com]
>
> Top Jewish Lawyer Urges Death For Families Of
> Palestinian Fighters
>
> Monday, June 10 2002 @ 04:49 PM GMT
>
> By Ami Eden: A prominent Washington attorney and
> Jewish communal leader is calling for the
> execution of family members of suicide bombers.
> Nathan Lewin, an oft-mentioned candidate for a
> federal judgeship and legal advisor to several
> Orthodox organizations, told the Forward that
> such a policy would provide a much-needed
> deterrent against suicide attacks.
>
> Under the proposal, which Lewin unveiled in the
> current issue of the opinion journal Sh'ma,
> family members would be spared if they
> immediately condemned the bombing and refused
> financial compensation for the loss of their
> relative. While a 20-month spate of suicide
> bombings has been met in the Jewish community
> with calls for increasingly Draconian preventive
> measures, Lewin appears to be the first Jewish
> communal leader to approve publicly of the
> concept of executing innocent civilians in the
> hopes of "curbing terrorism."
>
> "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," wrote Lewin, who served
> as president of the International Association of
> Jewish Lawyers and Jurists and is a vice
> president of the Orthodox Union. "It is a policy
> born of necessity - the need to find a true
> deterrent when capital punishment is demonstrably
> ineffective."
>
> Lewin argued that the biblical injunction to
> destroy the ancient tribe of Amalek serves as a
> precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are
> "ordinarily unacceptable" in the face of a mortal
> threat. His proposal, however, was rejected by
> an Israeli diplomat in New York, and discounted,
> in terms ranging from mild to condemnatory, by a
> range of commentators, "terrorism experts" and
> Jewish communal leaders from across the American
> political spectrum. "The State of Israel is
> determined to respond to every Palestinian
> provocation," said Ido Aharoni, consul for media
> and public affairs at Israel's New York
> consulate.
>
> "Israel's military approach is to pursue the
> perpetrators and those who seek to carry out acts
> of terrorism against innocent Israelis. Within
> that framework, Israel is trying to minimize, if
> possible to eliminate, the number of innocent
> lives lost."
>
> Several leading Jewish figures, including Harvard
> Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, argued that
> the plan represented a legitimate if flawed
> attempt to strike a balance between preventing
> terrorism and preserving democratic norms. But
> the proposal was strongly condemned by the head
> of the Reform movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and
> the executive vice chairwoman of the Jewish
> Council for Public Affairs, Hannah Rosenthal.
>
> "The opinion is utterly reprehensible and totally
> contrary to the most fundamental principles of
> the Jewish religious tradition and everything the
> State of Israel has been about since its
> founding," said Yoffie, president of the Union of
> American Hebrew Congregations.
>
> "I've said it, and everyone realizes, that in a
> war all of our standards on civil liberties may
> not apply. But to say that you need to make
> common-sense compromises is a long way from
> saying we are going to kill innocent people to
> bring about deterrence." Yoffie rejected Lewin's
> reference to Amalek as a possible justification
> for killing innocents. He argued that for nearly
> 2,000 years talmudic sages and other rabbinic
> commentators have argued that the lessons of
> Amalek could not be applied to contemporary
> times.
>
> In an article that appeared in the Sh'ma journal
> alongside Lewin's essay, Brandeis University
> Jewish studies professor Arthur Green wrote, "I
> only wonder how long it will take [Lewin], by the
> force of this proof-text, to go all the way and
> suggest that the Palestinian nation as a whole
> has earned the fate of Amalek."
>
> Green, former president of the Reconstructionist
> Rabbinical College, wrote that his first desire
> upon reading Lewin's essay was to "tear my
> garments, as a sign of mourning on hearing the
> desecration of God's name."
>
> The criticisms of Lewin were taken one step
> further by Jeremy Burton, a member of Sh'ma's
> advisory board and executive director of AMOS:
> The National Jewish Partnership for Social
> Justice. Burton argued, in his own name, that the
> attorney should now be blackballed from organized
> Jewish life, just as the late Rabbi Meir Kahane
> was ostracized for calling for the mass
> deportation of Arabs from Israel.
>
> Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, national director
> of the Anti-Defamation League, rejected the
> notion that Lewin should be elbowed out of
> communal life. They argued that his proposal
> represented a legitimate attempt to forge a
> policy for stopping terrorism.
>
> Foxman declined to take a stand on the actual
> proposal, citing his policy of deferring to
> Jerusalem on Israeli security issues.
>
> Though they declined to endorse the controversial
> proposal, top officials at the O.U. and Agudath
> Israel of America, for whom Lewin has done legal
> work, expressed sympathy for Lewin's efforts to
> curb what they described as an unprecedented wave
> of suicide attacks in Israel. "[Lewin] is not a
> Kahanist; he is not a nut," said Richard Stone,
> chair of the O.U.'s Institute of Public Affairs.
> Stone noted that Lewin, a member of the
> institute's executive committee, was not
> advocating the mass deportation of Arabs, rather
> a limited method of fighting terrorists.
>
> Rabbi William Altshul, headmaster of the Melvin
> J. Berman Hebrew Academy, a Modern Orthodox
> Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., told the
> Forward that he did not regret the decision to
> honor Lewin this week at the school's annual
> dinner. "I haven't read the article," Altshul
> said. "But Nat has always been known for his
> outspoken opinions, and I respect him for it."
> Even as several observers rejected the notion of
> blackballing Lewin, they offered substantive
> critiques of his argument.
>
> Dershowitz, author of "Why Terrorism Works" (Yale
> University Press, 2002), and "terrorism
> researcher" Steven Emerson, who both favor the
> limited use of torture to extract information
> about an impending terrorist attack, said that
> they balked at the execution of innocent
> civilians. Still, Emerson added, "all bets are
> off" if terrorists were to target thousands of
> people with non-conventional weapons.
>
> Dershowitz argued that the same level of
> deterrence could be achieved by leveling the
> villages of suicide bombers after the residents
> had been given a chance to evacuate (an idea
> Lewin disparagingly likened to "using aspirin to
> treat brain cancer"). Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of
> Orthodox Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck,
> N.J., a trained lawyer known for hawkish views on
> Israeli security issues, argued that a policy of
> mass deportations, rather than executions, could
> serve as an effective, but less deadly, deterrent
> against future attacks.
>
> Several observers defended Lewin by noting that
> the United States killed tens of thousands of
> civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Yoffie
> warned against such parallels. "If we are going
> to start looking for historical justifications
> for us to kill innocent people, then we are
> destroying the moral basis of our argument, which
> is ultimately our most effective weapon," the
> Reform leader said. "Don't go down that road
> because it is wrong, self-defeating and dangerous
> for Israel."
>
> © 2002 [Forward.com]. This news item is
> distributed via Middle East News Online
> <http://www.MiddleEastWire.com>.
>
>
>
>
>
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