Search Results for: holocaust

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a press conference that 31 of the hostages held by Hamas were dead, more than one fifth of the remaining 136 people who are still held captive in Gaza. The press conference followed a report in the New York Times that detailed a confidential [...]

Alabama’s experimental use of gas to torture to death Kenneth Smith on January 25th — like all executions by lethal injection — has perpetuated a horrific Nazi legacy in the United States and is a traumatizing affront to many in the Jewish community. The fact that this torment was blindly carried out just ahead of [...]

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel on Friday to “take all measures within its power” to prevent breaches of the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip, but declined to order a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War. The order followed proceedings initiated by South Africa and issued a number of provisional measures. This is not the court’s final ruling on [...]

I am an ordained Jewish cantor, a former Jewish prison chaplain, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. I write these words on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and on the morning after Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas — the first execution of this [...]

“So far from it being unjust to punish him, it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.” Nuremberg Tribunal (1946) At the beginning of 2024, former President Donald J. Trump’s most conspicuously unsupportable legal claim has been his personal immunity from criminal prosecution. With this claim, Mr. Trump and his lead [...]

It is in the best interest of the Jewish people and the state of Israel that my fellow Jewish leaders whose moral compass compels them to criticize elements of the Israeli government’s response to Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attack do so openly. They should speak truth to power, despite any fears for job security, [...]

Federal legislation criminalising the public display or sale of Nazi and terrorist group symbols came into effect in Australia on Monday. The legislation criminalises the Nazi salute and public display of Nazi symbols, including the Nazi double sig rune “Schutzstaggel” and the Nazi Hakenkreuz. These offences are punishable by up to 12 months in prison. [...]

During every execution in the United States, Death Penalty Action* holds a virtual vigil simultaneously with local death penalty abolitionists protesting outside the prisons and state capitals or governor’s mansions where the state-sponsored killing is taking place. When these gatherings are in person, those in attendance toll the same massive bell at the time the [...]

Every December 10th, international lawyers, governments, and advocacy groups commemorate Human Rights Day. This marks the day in 1948 when, improbably, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in Paris by a nascent United Nations General Assembly under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. This year, as the Declaration turned 75, I found myself in [...]

A lawyer-turned-death penalty abolitionist and a Jewish cantor join forces for JURIST to argue that the Jewish community has a unique obligation to voice resistance to Alabama’s plans to begin using nitrogen gas as a means of executing death row convicts. In Part 1, Stephen Cooper reflects on his great-grandmother’s death in a Nazi death [...]