Israel’s debate over the death penalty for terrorists is usually framed as a practical argument about deterrence. Will execution prevent attacks by people already willing to die? Is it moral, effective, reversible?

But the most consequential move in the current proposal is not about deterrence at all. It is about definition. And in criminal law, definition is never neutral.

On November 5, 2025, Israel’s official legislative gazette published two bills titled “Death Penalty for Terrorists” (Amendments 159 and 160). At their core is a new aggravated form of murder. If a person causes the death of an Israeli citizen—intentionally, or with indifference—motivated by racism or hostility toward a public, and does so with the aim of harming the State of Israel and “the revival of the Jewish people in its land,” the punishment is death—and only death.

That phrase—“the revival of the Jewish people in its land”—is the hinge on which everything turns. It sounds historical, even uplifting. In a criminal statute, however, it functions as an ideological filter. The bill does not define terrorism as politically motivated violence against civilians. It defines terrorism as violence that can be framed as an assault on Jews, and on Israel as the vehicle of Jewish national revival.

That is why the proposal is not merely extreme; it is selective in a way that matters. The death penalty is not triggered by brutality alone, or even by racism........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)