Israeli parliament advances bill mandating death penalty for terrorists

Israeli lawmakers on Monday evening voted 39-16 in favor of the first reading of a controversial government-backed bill sponsored by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech to impose the death penalty on “terrorists who have killed Israelis,” The Times of Israel reported.

It must pass a second and third reading before becoming law.

Two other death penalty bills, sponsored by Likud MK Nissim Vaturi and Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, also passed their first readings 36-15 and 37-14.

Son Har-Melech’s bill stipulates that Israeli courts must impose the death penalty on those who have committed a nationalistically motivated murder of a citizen of Israel, while allowing judges serving on military courts in the West Bank to sentence offenders to death with a simple majority, rather than unanimous decision, according to The Times of Israel.

The bill would also remove the possibility of regional military commanders commuting such sentences.

The bill states that it applies to those who kill Israelis due to “racism” and “with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the revival of the Jewish people in its land,” leading to criticism that it would apply only to Arabs who kill Jews and not to Jewish terrorists.

Although the death penalty formally exists in Israeli law, it has only ever been used once, in 1962 — in the case of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust, The Times of Israel reported.

It is technically allowed in cases of high treason, as well as in certain circumstances under martial law that applies within the IDF and in the West Bank, but currently requires a unanimous decision from a panel of three judges, and has never been implemented.