Claims Jews Should Demand Commutation of Arab Death Sentences in Interests of Possible Future Palest

Benjamin Segel, writing in the Vienna “Wahrheit,” proposes that Jews demand of the British government that it commute the death sentences of Arabs found guilty of murdering Jews in the August disturbances. This, he believes, would be in the best interests of a future reconciliation between Jew and Arab in Palestine. After arguing that capital punishment in general is against Jewish tradition and Jewish sentiment, he says:

“The theory that the death sentences should be carried out in order to frighten the Arabs from repeating such atrocities in the future does not hold water. Those Arabs who came in contact with the revolvers of the Jewish Self-Defense Corps will long remember their fright, and will respect the Jew. Jews should demand permission to possess arms. It is no insult to the Bedouins if one should declare that they are still a bit primitive.

“Whoever is interested that permanent warfare should exist between Jew and Arab must also want that the death sentences against the Arabs be carried out to the limit. The blood of the Arabs will be grist to his mill. For only when blood has flown between two peoples, blood that has not been spilt during the mad warfare between man and man, but spilt by the hand of a cold-blooded third party in the name of a higher justice, in revenge for the injustice committed by the one against the other-then it is that no reconciliation between the two peoples is possible. Whoever is for a reconciliation between Jew and Arab in Palestine will, whatever England may think, stretch forth the hand of friendship to the Arab-and wait until the Arab will grasp it.

“Therefore let no ghost of an executed Arab stand between the two peoples, though the death sentence be ever so just. When we Jews will have done everything in our power to get a commutation of the sentences, we will have made friends out of enemies.”

Discussing the same question the “Jewish World” of London says editorially:

From Berlin comes the proposal that Jews shall make a beau geste in favor of the Arabs and petition the Government not to allow any of those who have been condemned to death for murder during the recent rioting to suffer the extreme penalty. Those who, like myself, are opposed to capital punishment, can take no objection to this-on the contrary. Moreover, according to Jewish law, these men should not be executed for, I take it, they were not convicted on the evidence of two eye-witnesses nor were they first warned of the consequences of their deed. But then, since the proposal has been made, some Jews have been condemned to death. Will the Arabs ask for clemency in their case or join in petitioning for mercy all round? In whatever may be done in this direction by Jews, care must be taken that on the one hand the Arabs may not be led to think that it is done in fear of how they may retaliate upon our people, or on the other, that it is done in order to save Jewish skin.”