Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, centre, and lawmakers celebrate after Israel's parliament passed a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians on Monday.Itay Cohen/The Associated Press
It will be some time before people forget the image of Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrating the passage of a new law allowing for the execution by hanging of Palestinians convicted of deadly terrorism – but not of an Israeli found guilty of the same crime.
Mr. Ben-Gvir, who advocated for the legislation, popped what looked like Champagne outside the Knesset chambers with some of his deliriously happy colleagues who, like the cabinet minister, wore gold pins in the shape of a noose on their lapels.
“Soon we will count them one by one,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said of the coming executions.
Knesset approves death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis
If Israel’s global standing was in decline before, this law does nothing to help. There are many Israelis equally horrified by what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done to the country’s reputation.
We will leave the atrocities of Gaza and what is going on in southern Lebanon for another day. Beginning to get the attention it deserves is the violence in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers are terrorizing and, in some cases, beating and killing Palestinians, many of whom have lived there for generations. In a report last month, the UN Human Rights Office estimated that more than 36,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in a one-year period ending Oct. 31, 2025.
The Ghanem family sit around a fire outside a shack near Tulkarm in the Israeli‑occupied West Bank. Members of the family were displaced last year from the Tulkarm refugee camp.Ammar Awad/Reuters
Under Israel’s new law, an Israeli settler who murders a Palestinian during an assault would not be subject to the death penalty, but a Palestinian who kills an Israeli could be put to death in 90 days if found guilty by a military court. (Israelis get tried in a civilian court.) Human rights groups say the law is discriminatory based on ethnic and religious identity and, if carried out, would constitute a war crime. It was even denounced by the American Jewish Committee.
Recently, a crew from CNN, working in the West Bank to document the violence, was detained and assaulted by soldiers from the Israel Defence Forces (the operational activities of the reserve battalion involved have been suspended, at least for now). CNN told the story of a 75-year-old Palestinian man beaten by Israeli settlers. His distraught wife would die a few days later of a heart attack. No one has been arrested.
Earlier last month, two Palestinian brothers – aged five and seven – and their parents were shot in the head by IDF forces while returning home in their car from a Ramadan shopping trip. The IDF said the car accelerated in the soldiers’ direction. Witnesses said that was a complete fabrication.
Speaking in the Knesset about what took place, the far-right politician Yitzhak Kroizer said there were “no innocent civilians or innocent children” in the Palestinian-occupied city in which the shooting took place. “I support the IDF soldier in every situation, even if the collateral damage is children and women – it does not matter to me.”
Meantime, some of Israel’s most distinguished and respected citizens are expressing revulsion at what they are witnessing.
Mordechai Kremnitzer, a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, recently wrote in Haaretz that the “old Israel” used to pride itself on control and self-discipline. “[The current government] seeks to replace restraint with a thirst for blood,” Mr. Kremnitzer wrote, “provided it is not Jewish blood.”
He continued: “The damage to Israel’s standing and its relations with the liberal West is evident and expected to intensify.”
Israeli settlers rampage through the West Bank as four Palestinians are killed in Gaza
Fania Oz-Salzberger, the eminent Israeli historian and writer, is even harsher in her condemnation. “Settler gangs terrorizing their Palestinian neighbours is not a new phenomenon,” she recently wrote in The Jewish News. “But it has cascaded in recent months and peaked under the smoke of the Iran war.”
She said the army either shows up late to the attacks, stands by with indifference, or “helps and encourages the Jewish gangsters.”
“I will not mince my words about the underlying rationale,” Ms. Oz-Salzberger wrote. “Netanyahu’s government is happily outsourcing the job of West Bank ethnic cleansing to the settler militias it has already armed, publicly embraced, and secretly whispered into their ears, ‘Go forth and kick them all out.’”
She continued: “The monster masquerading as Judaism on the hilltops of Samaria and Judaea is an enemy to every Jew in the world.”
Israelis protest the new death penalty law for Palestinians in Jerusalem on Tuesday.Ammar Awad/Reuters
Jews around the world are repelled by a government that seemingly exists without moral constraints and appears intent on expanding at all costs.
The United Nations and countries like France, Germany and, yes, Canada, can denounce what is taking place, and many have done so. But their lame communiqués carry about as much weight as the flimsy paper on which they’re written.
The government of Israel does not seem to care what they think, or what the world thinks. It believes it’s winning. Pop the Champagne.