TEL AVIV – Far-right supporters of a controversial Israeli death penalty law were throwing champagne corks as it passed the Knesset on Monday night, but its passage drew global condemnation from allies and international human rights groups.
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The new law effectively makes the death penalty by hanging the default sentence for murderers who commit murder “with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel” – language that appears to target Palestinian terrorists but is actually tantamount to a boycott of Israelis who kill Palestinians.
Because the law would expedite the death penalty for Palestinians and is nearly impossible to enforce on Israeli killers, human rights groups say it is likely to inspire more outrage and violence than it prevents.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement It said on Tuesday the measure was a “particularly serious violation of international law” and warned that its application to residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip “would be a war crime.”
Australia, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom expressed concern over its “genuine discriminatory character”. joint statementWhile Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a Post X that it was “another step towards apartheid.”
The Trump administration has so far avoided joining the critics, with a State Department spokesperson saying it “respects Israel’s sovereign right to set its own laws,” adding: “We are confident that any such measures will be conducted with respect for a fair trial and all applicable fair trial guarantees and protections.”
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Advocates for the law within Israel have pointed to violent attacks carried out by Palestinian militants over the past few years.
For Micah Avni, his support for the law is deeply personal, having watched the Palestinian terrorist who murdered his father Richard Avni a decade ago be freed from an Israeli prison in exchange for Israelis held hostage by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attacks.
“I wish it was there earlier and I’m glad it’s still there,” Avni, 56, said in a phone call on Tuesday. “The terrorist who murdered my father showed no remorse at all. Based on the data I am certain he is planning his next terrorist attack there.”
Critics of the law say the new law is unlikely to stop Ghanem or anyone else from killing Israelis.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician and leader of the Palestinian National Initiative Party, said, “This sends another message to the Palestinians that there is no room for compromise.” “This will not stop the Palestinians but will instead enhance their struggle for freedom from this oppressive system.”
Under the new law, death sentences will be handed down by military courts that almost exclusively prosecute Palestinians and have a 96% conviction rate, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
The group said the death penalty would now require only a simple majority of sitting judges rather than unanimous consent. And the sentence must be served without any possibility of remission or reduction within 90 days of sentencing.
“This is going to be another tool in the Israeli toolkit to kill Palestinians,” said Shai Parnes, B’Tselem’s public outreach director.
The law will not apply to Palestinians already convicted for participating in the October 7 attacks. But those who have not been convicted, including the estimated half of jailed Palestinians who have been jailed but not formally charged under Israel’s so-called “administrative detention” for Palestinian crimes, can still be sentenced to death.
The death penalty is technically legal in Israel but only for crimes against humanity and treason.
The death penalty for murder was outlawed in 1954 and Israel has executed only two people in its 78-year history. Meir Tobiansky was hanged for treason in 1948, but was fully acquitted a year later. In 1962, after a widely watched trial in Jerusalem, Israel hanged Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the genocide.
The Israeli Medical Association’s ethics board said last year that its members would be banned from administering lethal injections, with the prescribed punishment under the new law being death by hanging. Israeli media.
Proponents of the death penalty, particularly far-right politicians who support it, describe the law as a much-needed reform of decades of lax sentences handed down by progressive judges that only foster terror.
“The idea is that they should not be allowed to think that by taking hostages they will get a get out of jail card because there is no death penalty,” said Caroline Glick, an international affairs adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hundreds of the more than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners released in Gaza in exchange for Israeli hostages were serving life sentences for deadly crimes against Israelis.
Yahya Sinwar, the former head of Hamas and one of the main masterminds of the October 7 attacks, was released from Israeli prison in a similar deal in 2011.
“It’s important from a deterrence standpoint because one of the things we’ve found is that a lot of times we give people life sentences and they don’t take it seriously,” Glick said.
But some of the law’s supporters in Parliament showed a certain enthusiasm for its intentions. Some right-wing MPs wore gold earrings during Monday’s session. After the bill was passed, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir raised a bottle of champagne as the television cameras rolled.
“Soon we will count them one by one,” he said of the upcoming execution as he poured champagne into his colleagues’ glasses. “From today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the State of Israel will take his life.”
