Philosopher's Plea

What the Torah teaches us is this: none but God can command us to destroy a man.

--Martin Buber, quoting Rabbi Mendel of Kosov (d. 1825)

The world's greatest Jewish philosopher and a pioneer Zionist, Martin Buber has lived in Jerusalem since 1938, when he fled the Nazis. Often opposed to Israel's policies (example: he advocates greater efforts to make peace with the Arabs), Buber is now in conflict with Premier David Ben-Gurion on a bitter issue: the fate of Adolf Eichmann.

Last month Buber phoned Ben-Gurion and asked permission to see him. No, the old (75) Premier told the ancient (84) philosopher, "you are older than I. I will come to see you.'' For two hours in Buber's house on Love of Zion Street, Ben-Gurion listened while Buber pleaded with him to commute the Eichmann death sentence. Society is merely a group of persons, argued Buber, and when it kills one man, it is killing part of itself. "Who gave society the right to kill itself?" he asked. "Society does not have such plenipotentiary rights." (Israel has no capital punishment except for high treason in wartime, war crimes against humanity or the Jewish people.)

In Eichmann's case, Buber added, execution would nurture another antichrist myth and permit a second-rate individual to symbolize the tragedy of European Jewry; his death would only offer easy, vicarious expiation to the guilty.*

Last week, when newspapers learned of Buber's plea for mercy, public reaction in Israel was overwhelmingly against him. Indirectly, Ben-Gurion gave a public answer to Buber. As the Israeli Supreme Court prepared to consider Eichmann's own appeal before handing down a verdict, the official government gazette published a regulation authorizing the appointment of "a man to execute a death sentence."

* Similar reasoning prompted Britain's Jewish publisher, Victor Gollancz, to suggest that Eichmann be sent to a kibbutz (collective farm) in Israel, "where he would live in an atmosphere of Christian (or, rather, Jewish) love, and he might learn the right way of living and repent his appalling sins."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.