A bill to impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists, who committed murder, passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum on Monday night by a vote of 39 to 16. It must pass three readings to become law.
“A terrorist who is convicted of murder out of motives of racism” and “under circumstances, in which the act was carried out with the intention of harming the State of Israel,” per the bill, “shall be sentenced to death.”
Terrorists would face a mandatory death sentence with no room for judicial discretion under the proposed law.
Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech, whose husband was killed in a terrorist attack in 2003 in which she was hurt seriously, proposed the bill.
“A dead terrorist won’t return to the cycle of bloodshed,” the Otzma Yehudit Party lawmaker said during the vote. “He will not return to terrorism, and he will certainly not be released in a deal.”
“In the Shalit deal, the terrorist who murdered my husband was released,” she added.
Har-Melech noted that a terrorist from the cell said in court that “the punishment you give me has no meaning. I know I’ll be released.”
“He was indeed released and was in the cell that murdered Malachi Rosenfeld,” she said, of the student killed in June 2015 when Hamas gunmen opened fire on his vehicle.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the bill.
On Sept. 28, the Israeli National Security Committee voted to advance the legislation. Security officials told the committee that they support the law in principle, but stressed the need for judicial discretion, meaning that the judge would decide whether to apply the death penalty.
“There will be no discretion in this law. That is my position and my belief,” stated Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli national security minister. “The moment you allow discretion, you weaken the deterrent effect.”
He added that “every terrorist who goes out to kill must know they will face only one punishment—the death penalty.”
Israel allows the death penalty for treason and for murders committed by Nazis and their associates. The Jewish state has only used it twice.
Israel Defense Forces officer Meir Tobianski was executed in 1948 for treason. He was later exonerated of the charges.
Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official, was executed in Jerusalem in 1962 for his crimes during the Holocaust.
