The Knesset on Wednesday introduced a government-backed bill to impose the death penalty on terrorists who kill Israelis, approving it in its preliminary study.
The bill was approved 55–9 with the support of the Yisrael Beitenu opposition party. It was passed along with an almost identical version presented by Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, and the two will likely be combined further in the process.
The primary law stipulates that courts will be able to impose the death penalty on those who have committed a nationalistically motivated murder of an Israeli citizen. However, this would not apply to an Israeli who killed a Palestinian.
The initiative has long been weighed by the Israeli right, but has consistently faced opposition from the security establishment, arguing that it will not prevent future terror attacks, and the legal establishment, which cites legal challenges. and warns that it could harm Israel in international forums.
While previous coalitions eventually agreed to repeal the death penalty law, the current hardline ruling bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the most right-wing in Israel’s history and the initiative was one of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s central campaign promises.
His far-right Otzma Yehudit party sponsored the bill, and his fellow faction member MK Limor Son Har Melech on Wednesday hailed its advancement, saying that when Palestinian terrorists are prosecuted and convicted, They enjoy “pleasant” prison conditions, receiving a stipend from the Palestinian. authorization, and are often released in prisoner exchanges.
Otzma Yehudit MK Limor son Har Melech after a meeting of the Religious Judaism party at the Knesset in Jerusalem on February 15, 2023. (Jonathan Sindel/Flash90)
During a plenary debate before the vote, she declared that “For years, an absurd situation has prevailed in the State of Israel, in which hateful terrorists who murder Jews are imprisoned for a few years in an Israeli prison, a terrorist released Bargain or a plea bargain and return to walk among us as another person.
Ultranationalist MK, whose first husband was killed in a terror attack in 2003, said imposing the death penalty on terrorists was “moral, just and necessary”.
In his remarks during the debate, Hadash-Tal MK Ahmed Tibi stated that his party ideologically opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, and noted that Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef had recently come out against the death penalty, as that the last chief rabbi.
Establishing the death penalty for terrorists was already high on the agenda of the hard-right coalition before deadly Palestinian attacks killed 14 people since the start of the year. The terror wave, which came amid rising deadly tensions in the West Bank, has renewed calls for harsher punitive action against Palestinian perpetrators as well as more severe preventive measures.
Hebrew media reported earlier this month that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was prepared to oppose the law on the grounds that it creates significant constitutional difficulties and goes against Israel’s pronouncements on the matter in international fora. And goes against the international trend to limit its use. death sentence.
Israeli security forces secure the scene of a terrorist shootout in Huwara, in the West Bank, near Nablus on February 26, 2023. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
The Ynet news site quoted Bahrav-Miara’s planned legal opinion as saying that the law would not serve as a deterrent, especially when criminals are ideologically motivated and willing to accept being killed anyway. She also reportedly noted that the only Western country that still uses the death penalty is the US, and even that only 31 of the 50 states still have it, seven have changed it to a previous one. ended in a decade.
Israel’s penal code includes the death penalty, but only for extremely rare cases – Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann was one of only two people executed by the state in nearly 75 years.
On Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Bierbock publicly expressed her concern over the death penalty bill. “We have abolished this penalty,” Bierbock said during a press conference in Berlin with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, adding that Germany was “talking about it with every country, including the United States”. America has the death penalty,” and that it has been proven ineffective as a deterrent.
Bierbock said students in German schools are taught that Israel carried out the death penalty in only one case – Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the Holocaust in the early 1960s – as a greater terrorist than any other. country in spite of facing danger.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Bierbock, right, and her Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen leave a news conference after a meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, February 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
She said, “This is always an argument that we have used and I say as a friend of Israel that I believe it would be a mistake to introduce the death penalty law.”
(Indeed, a second man was executed in Israel – military officer Meir Tobiansky – after a 1948 verdict by an IDF court-martial convicted him of treason during the War of Independence, although the evidence was circumstantial and he was posthumously convicted of treason.) was approved. Fee.)
Ben Gwyr reprimanded Barebock for his comments.
Ynet news website quoted the far-right minister as saying, “The last people we should be preaching to are the Germans.” “He should think 1,000 times before talking about Israel’s right to defend itself.”
