Yesterday, the Knesset passed legislation mandating the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly acts of terrorism in military courts. The vote passed 62-47 after nearly twelve hours of intense debate.

The law mandates death by hanging as the default sentence, to be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, with no right of appeal. A simple judicial majority – rather than the unanimity previously required – is now sufficient to kill a convicted terrorist. It takes effect immediately, and does not apply retrospectively (meaning those responsible for the massacres of 7 October are now covered).

Without minutes of passing, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition with the Supreme Court challenging it as ‘discriminatory by design.’

Yahya Sinwar was freed in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange after more than two decades in an Israeli prison for the murder of two Israeli soldiers. Sinwar returned to Gaza and rose to lead Hamas.

Shin Bet data indicate that approximately half of those released in the Shalit deal resumed terrorist activity; among those convicted of murder, the figure was approximately 80%. The law includes an explicit provision that bars the government from releasing or exchanging anyone sentenced to death.

‘This is a day of justice for the victims and a day of deterrence for our enemies. No more revolving door for terrorists, but a clear decision. Whoever chooses terrorism chooses death,’ said a triumphant Ben Gvir, wearing the golden noose-shaped lapel pin he and other advocates of the measure have worn for months to illustrate their drive for the death penalty.

It is also worth remembering who wrote this law: MK Limor Son Har-Melech, whose husband was murdered in a 2003 terrorist attack, was its primary sponsor. She wept on the Knesset floor when it passed: ‘This is a day on which the State of Israel chose life.’

This is a human reality that sits at the centre of the debate, and any honest accounting ought to begin there; the revolving door is not a flaw in the system, but the system itself, and the families and friends of terror victims have paid the price most dearly.

Nor is this MK’s position a fringe one imposed on a reluctant public, as support for the death penalty for terrorists has been a consistent majority view among Jewish Israelis for years. A 2017 Israel Democracy Institute poll found 70% support. By November of 2025, that figure had risen to 81% in favor of executing convicted Nukhba terrorists. Sixty-two elected members of the Knesset voted for this legislation after twelve hours of debate; Israel is a democracy, and that is what matters. This is, for all its potential flaws, a very deterrent tool. No longer will the State of Israel be a revolving door for terrorism.

That said, there are flaws: Palestinians are tried in military courts; Israeli citizens are not. The law, by its very own design, applies to one ethnic group and not the other. Former deputy Mossad director and opposition lawmaker Ram Ben Barak said as much from the Knesset floor: ‘Do you understand what it means that there is one law for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and a different law for the general public? It says that Hamas has defeated us.’

The Jews have, for millennia, experienced differential legal treatment. Military courts convict Palestinians at a rate of between 96% and 99%. The question is not whether those convicted are guilty, because the overwhelming majority are; the question we ought to ask ourselves here is what will happen when the rare exception occurs. If Israel is to shake off the accusation of being an apartheid state, it must first deal with this issue. Death by hanging within 90 days, and the lack of a right to appeal, leaves no mechanism for correction. The religious right-wing of Israel forgets here that Maimonides warned that decreasing burdens of proof leads eventually to conviction, ‘according to the judge’s whim.’ The removal of the unanimity requirement moves in precisely that direction.

A 2012 National Research Council report, reviewing more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect from capital punishment are fundamentally flawed. During the Knesset debate itself, no serious evidence was presented that accurately shows how the death penalty reduces terrorism. If there is one thing Israel, and the world as well, knows from Islamist terrorism, it is that ideologically motivated terrorists seek martyrdom. Their execution may function as almost a reward, rather than a punishment. Between 1979 and April 2024, there were 66,872 Islamist attacks worldwide; they killed at least 249,941 people. 9/11, 7/10, 7/7; the Manchester Arena Bombing of 2017, the Streatham Attack of 2020, the Heaton Park Synagogue Attack of 2 October, 2025. These are all examples of Islamist terrorism in which the perpetrator was killed in the act, either by their own device or by security forces who arrived on the scene. And we know each one.

Now, this due process objection, while sincerely held, does not withstand scrutiny in the context of the most serious terrorism cases. This figure of 96%-99% is one which critics cite as evidence of systemic bias – and perhaps it is, to a small extent – but it equally reflects the evidentiary standard applies to cases that area, by their nature, extensively documented. These individuals’ culpability is established by intelligence, forensic evidence, and witness testimony accumulated over the years. The 90-day window will, quite rightly, face legal challenge, and the Supreme Court may yet impose modifications.

On deterrence, the honest answer is that nobody can know anything with certainty. That, however, cuts both ways. The absence of proof is not proof of absence. What we do know, however, is that the permanent removal of a terrorist from the field prevents further attacks with absolute reliability. Yahya Sinwar spent 22 years in an Israeli prison and went on to kill over 1,200 people in a single morning. Whether or not the death penalty deters the next terrorist, it eliminates with the utmost finality the possibility that the convicted one will be released in a future deal, recruit others from prison, or plan another atrocity. For the families and friends of his victims, and the surviving victims themselves, that is not a secondary consideration in the slightest.

The political circumstances of this bill’s passage are certainly uncomfortable, however, and supporters must acknowledge that plainly; but the question of whether Ben-Gvir celebrated too loudly (he immediately handed out champagne upon the bill’s passage), or whether Netanyahuu reversed his position under political pressure (as he is known for), is separate from the question of whether this law is clean and just.

Jewish law, too, does not prohibit the death penalty; it only demands that it be taken seriously. The Talmudic standard of restraint was developed for a rabbinic court operating in conditions of peace and certainty, not for a state that lost over a thousand citizens in a single day to men who had previously been released from its own prisons. A fact that tends to go unmentioned in liberal critiques of the law is that the Council of Torah Sages reviewed this legislation, and endorsed it. Jewish tradition has a duty to protect the sanctity of life, and the obligation, incumbent on any state, to continue to protect it.

The Supreme Court may yet strike the law down, but the public has supported its underlying logic for years, and the political class has now delivered it. Mercy has its own body count, and that body count is too high. The likes of European foreign ministers, who, for now, lead their country from the safety of their homes far from bases of Islamist terrorism, have heavily criticized this law. One wonders what would change if it were they who had to make the decision of whether to kill in turn those who had killed their sons and daughters.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)