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Israel has used the death penalty only twice against a convicted prisoner. The last time was more than 60 years ago, to hang the notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
But, following the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, Israel's deadliest day, there is a political push to pass a highly controversial new death penalty law, targeting Palestinians convicted by Israeli courts of fatal terrorist attacks.
“It’s another brick in the wall of our defense,” says the far-right chairman of the parliamentary national security committee, Zvika Fogel. He adds that bringing in the death penalty is the most moral, the most Jewish and the best thing to do.
But human rights groups see the bill as "one of the most extreme legislative proposals" in Israeli history. They argue it is unethical and, because it is designed to apply only to Palestinians, they say it will lead to "racialized death penalty."
There have been heated hearings in Israel's parliament involving rabbis, doctors, lawyers and security officials. Families whose loved ones were killed in the brutal attack in southern Israel more than two years ago, and in the fighting in the devastating Gaza war that followed, have come out to speak against and in favor of the legislation.
"In my opinion, only 10 or 20 percent of the law is intended for justice, and the remaining percentage is obstruction and prevention," says grieving mother Dr. Valentina Gusak, who supports the bill.
Addressing the national security committee, she showed a photo of her 21-year-old daughter, Margarita, who had hoped to study medicine like both her parents. She was killed with her boyfriend, Simon Vigdergaus, as they fled the Nova music festival in 2023.
"It's preventive treatment, that's what it's called in medicine," says Dr. Gusak of the reinstatement of the death penalty, which she believes could have saved her daughter's life.
"It's a vaccine against the next murder and we must secure the future of our children."
The death penalty exists for certain crimes in Israel, but in the rare cases where military courts have previously handed down death sentences to convicted terrorists or enemy combatants, all have been commuted to life imprisonment after appeals.
The Eichmann case was extraordinary. The SS lieutenant colonel was an architect of the Holocaust. In 1960, he was kidnapped from Argentina by Israeli secret service agents before being brought to a lengthy public trial before a special court in Jerusalem.
Before that, a military captain, Meir Tobianski, was executed for treason after a makeshift military court in June 1948, shortly after the establishment of the Israeli state. He was acquitted of the charges posthumously.
Opponents of the death penalty have rejected it on religious, ethical and legal grounds, arguing that it goes against Jewish law, violates the right to life and risks executing innocent people. But Israeli human rights groups also argue that the proposed new law will deepen discrimination by targeting only Palestinians convicted of terrorism and not Jewish Israelis.
"The fact that we are re-discussing the return of this to the legal system in Israel is in itself a weak point," says Tal Steiner, executive director of the Israeli NGO, HaMoked.
"Beyond that, our objection is that the law is racistly drafted, intended to apply only to Palestinians, never to Jews, only to people who kill Israeli citizens, never for example to Israeli citizens who kill Palestinians. The motivation is clear."
The stated purpose of the bill is to protect Israel, "its citizens and residents," while "increasing preventive measures against the enemy" and reducing the incentive "to commit kidnappings or take hostages in order to negotiate the release of terrorists," as well as "ensuring retaliation" for criminal acts.
Mandatory death sentences would be carried out in Israeli military courts that exclusively try Palestinians from the occupied West Bank. After a mandatory appeal against the verdict, those convicted of deadly terror attacks would be hanged within 90 days.
The bill would also allow the death penalty to be used within the same short timeframe in regular Israeli courts, but would not be mandatory. /Adapted from BBC/
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