Over the years, I have noticed you spoutingthis kind of stuff, specifically:
The more I see of many Christians the more I see their OLD TESTAMENT used to reject Christ. HE did not preach 'an eye for an eye'.

Note: this post is not about Christianity - I am simply using that quote as the most recent example of your attitude to the Old Testament. There are many previous examples of your using the Old Testament to buttress your views on Israel and possibly Jews generally. (For the benefit of the uninitiated here: Bowser's views are basically that the Old Testament has taught and conditioned Jews and Israelis to be vicious, vengeful, and greedy. A Google serach within the Habitablezone site will provide ample evidence of this statement.)

I will not address those prejudices here. This post is is simply to educate you on the correct and true meaning of the phrase, "an eye for an eye".

Let's start with the BBC Religion Team discussing ethical issues connected with retribution:

Justice demands that courts should impose punishment befitting the crime so that the courts reflect public abhorrence of the crime.

Many people find that this argument fits with their inherent sense of justice.

It's often supported with the argument "An eye for an eye". But to argue like that demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what that Old Testament phrase actually means. In fact the Old Testament meaning of "an eye for an eye" is that only the guilty should be punished, and they should punished neither too leniently or too severely.

So, some qualification provided there: not retribution and vengeance as such, but punishment appropiate to the crime - what is now sometimes called "truth in sentencing".

Some further clarity is given by these Unitarians against the death penalty:

According to the same chapter in the Bible, capital punishment is demanded also if a person hits his or her parents, steals a person (a verse that is used to support slavery as well), curses his or her father or mother, keeps an ox that has been known to gore people, or participates in sorcery, bestiality, idolatry, or adultery. Other crimes that received the death sentence, according to Scripture, include gluttony, disobedience, and drunkenness. Most who interpret "eye for an eye" literally also use these verses to refer to homosexuality as a crime which was punishable by death. If the death penalty were used according to the literalist or conservative view of the Scriptures, we would not have many people left standing to institute the punishment.

In truth, the Hebrew text "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" was a limitation on mass killings of clans out of vindication. Until the law was put into effect, the practice had been for a family that had one person murdered to retaliate on an entire family or clan. "An eye for an eye" meant that people could not take more than one life for a life, even if the person who was murdered was pregnant and about to give birth. In practice, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" death penalty was used only when there had been two witnesses that had had seen the murder taking place. These witnesses had to inform the person about to commit murder that he/she would receive the death penalty if he/she committed murder. If after that warning, the person proceeded in a premeditated fashion, then the death penalty could be used. Because of these limitations, the death penalty was rarely used in Hebrew culture.

Finally, I found a more refined and detailed understanding of the phrase explained here. This is the most relevant section:

the Bible never says "take an eye for an eye." That is a mistranslation. The Bible says, "and you shall give . . . an eye for an eye." Surely this does not mean that the person who accidentally blinded someone must give the victim a gouged out eye. As Avigdor Bonchek has noted in Studying the Torah: "Were the text's intention to extract an eye from the villain, the use of the word 'give' is inappropriate. The lex talionis punishment is meant to take from the guilty, not to to give to the victim. Certainly the victim has no desire to receive a gouged-out eye. It should have said, 'and you shall take an eye for eye . . . ' But it doesn't; it says 'give.' Giving implies something that is meant to reach the recipient. Monetary compensation fits that definition; handing over a dismembered limb doesn't." Boncheck identifies another mistranslation of the "eye for eye" text which, when corrected, offers further support for the Talmudic exegesis of monetary compensation.

The Bible does not say, "an eye for an eye." It says, "an eye instead of an eye" or "in place of an eye." "Instead of, in place of" - tachat in the Hebrew - connotes not identical substitution, not an eye for an eye, but one item substituted for a different item.

... or, in a bit more detail:

Michelangelo's Moses has two horns on his head because Michelangelo's Bible, the Latin Vulgate, mistranslated Exodus 34:29 as "Moses had horns" instead of "Moses' face shone." With similar results, Exodus 21:24-25 is commonly read as requiring "an eye for an eye."

By translation or mistranslation, the Hebrew Bible has probably supplied more staples to the Western cannon of quotations than any other book (or set of books), including Shakespeare. Certain Biblical lines stand out, though the distinction is sometimes a dubious one from the perspective of scholars of Hebrew and of the Hebrew Bible. For reliance on mistranslation, projection of preconception, brutality of intent and ignorance of the Biblical context, probably no Biblical verses are more famous, or infamous, than this Torah portion's "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise" (Exodus 21:24-25).

Here, we are told, is vengeful, unbending, even inhuman justice, only too typical of the "Old Testament." Here is the "Law" against which Paul of Tarsus inveighed so heavily; here is Judaism's absolute, untrammeled and altogether one-sided rigor. Here is the transmogrified teaching of the jealous G-d of Moses - Him Who needed to be replaced, or, at the least, developed into Paul's G-d of love, mercy and understanding.

It's worse still. When the Talmudic rabbis came and read "an eye for an eye" to connote not sadistic punishment but monetary compensation for bodily injury, this, we are told, was but the sophistry of the Pharisees, the embarrassed apologia of rabbis too intellectually dishonest to admit to the decisive impugning of Biblical Law offered by its critics.

A careful reading of the context of "an eye for an eye" reveals the egregiousness of its popular misreading - the absence of any basis for its dubious status as a Biblical disfiguration - as well as the logic of its Talmudic exegesis.

.....

What is the Biblical basis for the Talmud's exegesis? Where does it say that if one accidentally blinds a person, the injurer is to offer monetary compensation for the worth of the victim's eye?

Further, even if there is a sound textual basis for such a reading, why doesn't the Bible just say so outright? Why the confusing reference to cruelty, if the meaning really is, "if someone accidentally blinds a person, the injurer must pay the victim the worth of his eye"?

First question first. If the Bible meant, take the eye of the injurer for the wasted eye of the victim, the Bible would have said so. But the Bible never says "take an eye for an eye." That is a mistranslation. The Bible says, "and you shall give . . . an eye for an eye." Surely this does not mean that the person who accidentally blinded someone must give the victim a gouged out eye. As Avigdor Bonchek has noted in Studying the Torah: "Were the text's intention to extract an eye from the villain, the use of the word 'give' is inappropriate. The lex talionis punishment is meant to take from the guilty, not to to give to the victim. Certainly the victim has no desire to receive a gouged-out eye. It should have said, 'and you shall take an eye for eye . . . ' But it doesn't; it says 'give.' Giving implies something that is meant to reach the recipient. Monetary compensation fits that definition; handing over a dismembered limb doesn't." Boncheck identifies another mistranslation of the "eye for eye" text which, when corrected, offers further support for the Talmudic exegesis of monetary compensation.

The Bible does not say, "an eye for an eye." It says, "an eye instead of an eye" or "in place of an eye." "Instead of, in place of" - tachat in the Hebrew - connotes not identical substitution, not an eye for an eye, but one item substituted for a different item. After Abraham, his sword ready to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah, was suddenly told by the angel of G-d not to sacrifice Isaac, "Abraham went and took the ram and brought it up for a burnt offering instead of (tachat) his son" (Genesis 22:13). In full context and under accurate translation, the Bible now reads: If a person accidentally blinds someone, the injurer must give the victim monetary compensation in place of an eye. That is, the injurer must give the victim something else - not an eye - in compensation for having accidentally wasted the victim's eye. As Boncheck writes, "An eye for an eye means to give something in place of the lost eye, that being monetary compensation."

But if the verse, by context and connotation, means monetary compensation, why does the Bible not say so? Why does the text insist on labeling compensation by the term "eye?" Why the verbal sleight of hand? Commentators offer: No Jewish court punishes by mutilating the guilty (unless one considers capital punishment a form of mutilation). In civil cases, the most that a Jewish court may impose is monetary compensation. But this can never fully compensate the victim. No price can be put on sight; no payment can replace it. The injurer deserves to lose his eye in the sense that his compensation to the victim is morally incommensurate to the injury, no matter how much he pays. Compensation cannot complete atonement.

The Bible uses the harsh phraseology, "an eye in place of an eye," to emphasize that compensation does not wipe the slate clean. The injurer must fill himself with remorse and repent.