The killing debate

N JUNE 1962, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi monster most directly responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II, was hanged in an Israeli prison. It is the only death sentence ever to be carried out by the Jewish state, where both the law and broad public sentiment oppose capital punishment for all but the most egregious crimes against humanity. As American international lawyer and Washington Times columnist Bruce Fein has succinctly put it, with reference to the Nazi atrocities, "some crimes betray a reptilian immorality and beastliness that only the supreme penalty of death can adequately answer. Anything less would trivialise the preciousness of humanity."

Age 4 Jan 2008