The news from Israel is full of the tension between norms and practice –the universal norms of a democratic polity versus the dehumanizing practice of military occupation. Recent video footage shows an Israeli soldier in the occupied city of Hebron shooting to death a Palestinian man lying prone on the ground; the Palestinian had been wounded by other soldiers in the course of a knife attack on them, but he no longer posed a threat to anyone. The soldier who killed him is going to be charged with murder. In a politically craven act meant to appeal to his political base, The Prime Minister has since sought to walk back his initial condemnation of the act.

Apropos to that ongoing story, Haaretz has this article about an Israeli cabinet debate in 1951 about striking the death penalty from the country’s legal code. It’s here in English and here in Hebrew