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UN Human Rights Chief Rips Israeli Legislation to Execute Palestinians
"When it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances," said Volker Türk.
Jan 02, 2026
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights on Friday forcefully denounced proposed Israeli legislation that would effectively "impose mandatory death sentences exclusively on Palestinians under certain circumstances, both in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Israel."
The statement from the UN leader, Volker Türk, came after Israel's parliament, the Knesset, advanced three bills in November—votes that drew widespread condemnation, including from Amnesty International, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization. The proposals would have to pass two more readings to take effect.
The bill pushed by the Otzma Yehudit or Jewish Power party would require courts to impose the death penalty on "a person who caused the death of an Israeli citizen deliberately or through indifference, from a motive of racism or hostility against a population, and with the aim of harming the state of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land."
As Türk noted: "When it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances... It is profoundly difficult to reconcile such punishment with human dignity and raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people."
"Such proposals are inconsistent with Israel's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," he explained. "In particular, the introduction of mandatory death sentences, which leave no discretion to the courts, and violate the right to life."
"The proposal also raises other human rights concerns, including on the basis that it is discriminatory given it will exclusively apply to Palestinians," the high commissioner continued.
He also highlighted that Palestinians are already often convicted after unfair Israeli trials, and denying any Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip a fair trial as outlined in the Fourth Geneva Convention is a war crime.
Türk's comments come after Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, argued last year that "the international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians."
Israeli politicians are pushing for the death penalty legislation over two years into a war on Gaza that has been globally decried as genocide—and led to an ongoing case before the top UN tribunal, the International Court of Justice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 71,271 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded another 171,233, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. At least hundreds of those deaths have occurred since Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire agreement nearly three months ago.
Israel has also continued to limit the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including a new ban on dozens of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which Türk sharply criticized on Wednesday.
"Israel's suspension of numerous aid agencies from Gaza is outrageous," he said. "This is the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access, including Israel’s ban on UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, as well as attacks on Israeli and Palestinian NGOs amid broader access issues faced by the UN and other humanitarians."
While Israel has slaughtered at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years and starved many more, Israeli soldiers and settlers have also injured and killed a growing number of Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank—which Netanyahu has tried to downplay.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that since the beginning of 2025, "a total of 238 Palestinians, including 56 children (24%), were killed by Israeli forces or settlers," and over the past three years, "settler violence and access restrictions have driven displacement across 85 Palestinian communities and areas in the West Bank, with 33 fully emptied of their residents."
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US Electric Grid Heading Toward 'Crisis' Thanks to AI Data Centers
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you."
Jan 02, 2026
The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026.
CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right.
However, objections to data centers aren't just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
CNBC noted that data centers' energy needs are so great that PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027.
Joe Bowring, president of independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics, told CNBC that he's never seen the grid under such projected strain.
"It’s at a crisis stage right now," Bowring said. "PJM has never been this short."
Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that he expects the debate over data centers to become even more intense this year once Americans start getting socked with even higher utility bills.
"I don't think we’ve seen the end of the political repercussions,” Gramlich said. “And with a lot more elections in 2026 than 2025, we’ll see a lot of implications. Every politician is going to be saying that they have the answer to affordability and their opponents’ policies would raise rates."
Concerns about data centers' impact on electric grids are rising in both red and blue states.
The Austin American-Statesman reported on Thursday that a new analysis written by the office of Austin City Manager TC Broadnax found that data centers have the potential to overwhelm the city's system given they are projected to need more power than can possibly be delivered with current infrastructure.
"The speed in which AI is trying to be deployed creates tremendous strain on the already tight resources in both design and construction," says the analysis, which noted that some proposed data centers are seeking more than five gigawatts, which is more than the peak load for the entire city.
In New York, local station News 10 reported last year that the New York Independent System Operator is estimating that the state's grid could be 1.6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements by 2030 thanks in large part to data centers.
Anger over proposed data centers has even spread to President Donald Trump's primary residential home of Palm Beach County, Florida, where local residents successfully postponed the construction of a proposed 200-acre data center complex.
According to public news station WLRN, locals opposed to the project cited "expected noise from cooling towers, servers, and diesel generators, along with heavy water use, pollution concerns, and higher utility costs" when petitioning Palm Beach County commissioners to scrap the proposal.
Corey Kanterman, a local opponent of the proposed data center, told WLRN that his goal is to shut the project down entirely.
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you," Kanterman said. "Put them in the location of least impact to the environment and people. This location is not it."
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‘A Fresh Start’: Mamdani Revokes Slate of Adams Executive Orders
Among them were orders that attacked critics of Israel, enabled ICE deportations, and promoted cryptocurrency.
Jan 02, 2026
In one of his first acts as New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani has revoked several highly controversial executive orders signed by his predecessor, Eric Adams. Among them were a pair of orders that attacked critics of Israel and others that enabled ICE deportations and promoted cryptocurrencies.
They were part of a slate of nine orders Mamdani revoked on Thursday, all of which were issued by the former mayor after he was hit with corruption charges by the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden on September 26, 2024—charges that the Trump administration later dropped as part of an apparent deal for Adams to cooperate with its mass deportation efforts.
Mamdani told the New York Daily News that the orders Adams signed after this date went "against the interests of working-class people and what they need from their mayor."
Two of Adams' revoked orders required the city to adopt a stance of unwavering support for Israel as it faced mounting criticism over its genocidal war in Gaza.
One order, signed in June 2025, officially recognized the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been widely criticized, including by Jewish scholars, for conflating many criticisms of Israel with bigotry against Jewish people.
As the New York Times notes, the IHRA "includes 11 examples intended to illustrate antisemitism, seven of which include or relate in some way to criticism of Israel."
Hadas Binyamini, a spokesperson for the New York-based group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which supported Mamdani, said at the time that the order was "deeply dangerous" and would "inflict punitive measures against New Yorkers speaking out and organizing against Israeli state violence."
The other order, which Adams signed last month after Mamdani was elected, barred city agencies from boycotting or divesting from Israel.
Mamdani has expressed support for the use of economic leverage against what he, and many human rights groups, have said is an "apartheid" system in Israel that subjects Palestinians and other non-Jewish ethnic groups to discriminatory policies and human rights violations.
The revocation of these two orders expectedly drew the ire of conservative Jewish leaders, and even Israel's foreign ministry, who have decried Mamdani, New York's first Muslim mayor, as an antisemite.
However, Mamdani has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to protecting the more than 1 million Jewish New Yorkers.
In a separate executive order, he said the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism, which Adams also established earlier this year, would remain open and that it "shall identify and develop efforts to eliminate antisemitism and anti-Jewish hate crime using the existing resources of the City of New York."
During a news conference Thursday, Mamdani said combating antisemitism "is an issue that we take very seriously, and as part of the commitment that we've made to Jewish New Yorkers, to not only protect them, but to celebrate and cherish them."
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, described both orders as "last-ditch attempts to suppress viewpoints that the mayor and his benefactors disagreed with." She said it is "no surprise and it is good news that our new mayor has revoked them.”
Mamdani also said he would seek to modify an executive order directing the New York Police Department to restrict protests outside houses of worship, which Adams signed in November after pro-Palestine groups staged a demonstration outside a synagogue that hosted an event that recruited Jewish Americans to settle in the illegally occupied West Bank.
A spokesperson for Mamdani, then the mayor-elect, said he "believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” He has not yet specified what changes he seeks to make to Adams' order.
Mamdani also revoked an order that allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to operate at New York's notorious Rikers Island prison, which he criticized as part of Adams' efforts to kowtow to Trump in exchange for a legal reprieve.
Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the order, which was blocked by the New York state Supreme Court in September, put "thousands of New Yorkers" at risk of "detention and deportation because they were sent to Rikers after being simply accused—not convicted—of a crime."
Mamdani also revoked an October order by Adams, who described himself as the "Bitcoin Mayor," that established a new cryptocurrency office to bring in industry leaders to advise city officials to help turn New York into "the crypto capital of the world.”
Adams had previously promoted the idea of using crypto to back New York's municipal bonds, which a top Mamdani ally, then-Comptroller Brad Lander, said was "not sufficiently stable to finance our city’s infrastructure, affordable housing, or schools."
Mamdani also halted Adams' plans to ban the city's horse carriage industry pending discussion with the carriage drivers' union, though the new mayor says he also wants to ban the practice.
Mamdani's office said the orders were meant to be a "fresh start for the incoming administration" and that the new mayor means to "reissue executive orders that the administration feels are central to delivering continued service, excellence, and value-driven leadership."
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