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itamar ben-gvir
Critics Warn of Mass Executions as Israel Advances Death Penalty Bill for Palestinians
“It seems the criminal apartheid state of Israel has grown impatient with slowly torturing, starving, and beating Palestinian hostages to death,” said one observer.
Mar 25, 2026
Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday voted to advance a bill legalizing execution by hanging of Palestinians convicted of "terrorism"-related killings, a move that prompted opponents to warn of mass executions under what one prominent human rights group called "apartheid" legislation.
The Knesset National Security Committee voted to send the bill for its final two readings before the Knesset General Assembly, which are expected to take place next week.
Bill sponsor Limor Son Har-Melech of the far-right Jewish Power Party called the bill's advancement a "moral and necessary step."
“The law sets out a clear and unequivocal message: Those who choose to murder Jews because they are Jews lose their right to live,” added Har-Melech.
The bill passed its first reading at the full Knesset last November, drawing widespread condemnation for provisions including mandatory death sentences without judicial discretion or possibility of pardons, to be carried out within 90 days.
Since then, amendments have been proposed to avoid accusations of discrimination amid the filing of around 2,000 proposed revisions by opposition lawmakers. Language under which Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians are not subjected to the legislation has been softened; however, critics contend that in practice, the bill would apply predominantly to Palestinian perpetrators.
The bill also retains what critics say is a discriminatory two-track legal regime; one for military courts which have jurisdiction over Palestinians—but not Israeli settlers—in the illegally occupied West Bank, and another for civilian courts inside Israel and East Jerusalem, which, like wider West Bank, has been unlawfully occupied by Israel for nearly 59 years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly pushed for the changes, which also include allowing judicial discretion in sentencing and removing a requirement for trials to take place in military courts. Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—is said to be wary of more global backlash against a country already facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—who was ordered last week to remove a video promoting the bill, in which he stands by a gallows at a memorial to Jews executed in the 1930s and '40s for resisting British occupation—called Tuesday's vote "a historic moment of justice for the state of Israel."
"No more revolving door of attacks, imprisonments, and releases," he added. "This law restores deterrence, restores justice, and sends a clear and unambiguous message to our enemies: Jewish blood is not cheap. We will continue to lead an uncompromising policy against terror until victory.”
Studies in the United States—the only Western democracy that actively executes people—have repeatedly shown that the death penalty does not deter crime.
Knesset members opposing the legislation—who are believed to be outnumbered by more than 2 to 1—condemned Tuesday's vote.
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, who represents the left-wing Democrats, slammed what he called "an extreme bill that does not exist in any democratic country, with serious moral flaws and profound security recklessness.”
Har-Melech, Ben-Gvir, and other backers of the bill have repeatedly worn noose-shaped lapel bins to show their support for legislation. Ben-Gvir handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading. Har-Melech recently dressed as an executioner replete with noose and syringe for the Purim holiday, while her husband donned a costume representing what he called the themes of "occupation, expulsion, settlement"—or the conquest, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonization of Palestine.
"With God's help, on next Purim we will need far more than a single breath to read the names of all the terrorists who were hanged," Har-Melech said in a video message marking the festive holiday. "And to the Jews there was light and joy and gladness."
Palestinians and their defenders warn that, if passed, the bill could open the door to mass executions.
Hamas, which still rules Gaza despite nearly 29 months of Israeli war and siege, called the bill “a dangerous terrorist step that paves the way for carrying out murder and liquidation crimes against our prisoners."
The Palestinian Prisoners Media Office said Wednesday in a statement: "This dangerous development constitutes an unprecedented escalation in the enemy's policies against our prisoners and represents a flagrant violation of all international laws and conventions. It reveals premeditated intentions to commit an organized crime against the prisoner movement."
The bill has sparked widespread condemnation around the world. United Nations experts have implored Israel to withdraw the bill, arguing it “would violate the right to life and discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory."
The European Union Diplomatic Service said Tuesday that the EU "opposes capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances."
"Israel has long upheld a de facto moratorium on both executions and capital punishment sentencing, thereby leading by example in the region despite a complex security environment," the agency added. "Approving this bill would represent a grave step backward from this important practice and from positions Israel has itself expressed in the past."
Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954; currently, its only capital offenses are crimes against humanity and treason. The only execution in Israeli history occurred in 1962 when Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann was hanged for genocide and crimes against humanity.
One senior Amnesty International official called the bill "yet another tool within Israel’s institutionalized system of apartheid against all Palestinians whose rights it controls."
Some critics noted that around 100 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, including some who were allegedly tortured or raped to death.
“Israel is already killing Palestinians on a regular basis—in detention facilities, and in the field, where lethal force is widely used by Israeli settlers and by the military with close to zero accountability,” Yuli Novak, executive director of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, told The Guardian on Wednesday, adding, "This law is another tool in this toolbox.’’
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‘New Level of Open and Deliberate Defiance of International Law’: Israel Demolishes UNRWA Buildings
"What happens today to UNRWA will happen tomorrow to any other international organization or diplomatic mission, whether in the occupied Palestinian territory or anywhere around the world," said the agency.
Jan 20, 2026
Israeli authorities' demolition of the headquarters of the United Nations agency that has for decades provided aid and civil services to Palestinians in territories illegally occupied by Israel was about "more than destroying walls," said one journalist and rights advocate in the region.
The bulldozing of the complex on Monday attacks the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East's (UNRWA) "very mission since 1949, violates the rights of Palestinian refugees, and aims to erase the support system they rely on," said Maha Hussaini, head of media and public engagement at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Hussaini was among those who spoke out as Israeli forces stormed the complex with bulldozers and began destroying buildings at the site after having sealed off the surrounding streets in East Jerusalem, the occupied city that Palestinians consider the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The Israel Defense Forces and demolition workers were also accompanied by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said the destruction of the compound, which has operated at the site for decades, marked a "historic day."
UN officials and other rights advocates, such as Jonathan Whittall—formerly the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories—said Israeli authorities were once again broadcasting their "contravention of their obligations under international law."
This morning, Israeli authorities are demolishing #UnitedNations property in #EastJerusalem, yet another live-streamed contravention of their obligations under international law. Just months ago, the ICJ reaffirmed that Israel "may not obstruct the functions of UNRWA in the OPT". pic.twitter.com/wqXvKzcKkH
— Jonathan Whittall (@_jwhittall) January 20, 2026
Whittall emphasized that Israel's destruction of UN property came months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) "reaffirmed that Israel 'may not obstruct the functions of UNRWA.'"
UNRWA released a statement accusing Israel of "a new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law," noting that the country is obligated "to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises."
Ben-Gvir led the destruction of the headquarters more than a year after Israeli lawmakers passed a law banning UNRWA, and weeks after the country banned dozens of international aid groups from operating in Gaza. Israeli officials claimed in 2024 that a small fraction of UNRWA's 13,000 staffers in Gaza had been involved in a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, but an independent investigation found that they had not backed up their claims with evidence.
UNRWA noted that last week, Israeli forces stormed an UNRWA health center in East Jerusalem and ordered it closed, and water and power supplies to the agency's health and education buildings across the region are scheduled to be cut in the coming weeks.
"These actions, together with previous arson attacks and a large-scale disinformation campaign, fly in the face of the ruling in October by the International Court of Justice, which restated that Israel is obliged under international law to facilitate UNRWA’s operations, not hinder or prevent them," said UNRWA. "The court also stressed that Israel has no jurisdiction over East Jerusalem."
"There can be no exceptions. This must be a wake-up call," the agency added. "What happens today to UNRWA will happen tomorrow to any other international organization or diplomatic mission, whether in the occupied Palestinian territory or anywhere around the world. International law has come under increasing attack for too long and is risking irrelevancy in the absence of response by member states.”
In the UK, member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn spoke to his fellow lawmakers about the destruction of the UNRWA compound—on top of Israel's continued slaughter of Palestinians despite a "ceasefire" deal that was reached in October and settler attacks in the West Bank—and demanded to know: "When is the British government going to impose sanctions on Israel for its endless violations of international law?"
Israel has begun bulldozing the UNRWA headquarters in occupied Jerusalem.
When is the British government going to impose sanctions on Israel for its endless violations of international law? pic.twitter.com/YADND8varu
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 20, 2026
International law advocate and UN representative Mohamad Safa noted that Israeli authorities violated Article 52 of Additional Protocol (I) Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter when they took over UNRWA's headquarters and raised the Israeli flag there.
"Another violation of international law being broadcast live. Israel's impunity must end!" he said.
Last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the UN could take Israel before the ICJ over its laws targeting UNRWA.
The UN, said Guterres, cannot remain indifferent to "actions taken by Israel, which are in direct contravention of the obligations of Israel under international law. They must be reversed without delay.”
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What Does Terrorism Actually Mean? Maybe Orwell Can Help
International activists kidnapped and brought to Israel by force, people simply being alive in a place an Israeli minister doesn’t want them to be, anyone near a place Israel has decided might be a Hamas tunnel—how are all these people terrorists?
Oct 14, 2025
When activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla were being held in Ktziot prison, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir staged a photo op taunting them and saying, “I was proud that we are treating the ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters, whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist and deserves the conditions ofterrorists”…the conditions in Ktziot prison.
This requires a little unpacking. First, Ben Gvir’s claim that the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), and the Conscience and Thousand Madleens flotilla that followed a week later, support terrorism requires a bit of jiujitsu. When Israel drops 2,000-pound dumb bombs on hospitals and defenseless people, they always insist they are actually targeting the hidden Hamas fighters in tunnels beneath the visible injury and death of people on the surface. They make a distinction between the terrorist below ground and the “collateral damage” above. But when anyone tries to bring aid to the victims, Israel erases their own distinction between hidden fighters and visible victims and claim that the aid is for terrorists. They claim that the activists are supporting terrorists, and that the flotillas are “Hamas Flotillas.”
Next, Ben Gvir does a bit of leapfrog, claiming that the activists he just defined as terror supporters are themselves terrorists. And, as terrorists, they deserve to be held in a terrorist prison like Ktziot, because, apparently, all prisoners of Israel are terrorists.
Similar language was used by Defense Minister Israel Katz, saying that anyone still in Gaza City, for any reason at all, after the Israelis ordered them to move out were “terrorists or terror supporters.”
Political violence is a serious subject, and we need to be able to think about it and discuss it in a serious way. The word terrorism is too important to that discussion for such sloppy usage and deliberate misuse by politicians.
International activists kidnapped and brought to Israel by force, people simply being alive in a place Katz doesn’t want them to be, anyone near a place Israel has decided might be a Hamas tunnel—how are all these people terrorists? What actions have they taken to earn the accusation? Ben Gvir and Katz don’t say.
This is, at best, broad and imprecise language.
In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell warned against this. He said that our language is, “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
Orwell also said that our words are often “meaningless, in the sense that they do not point to any discoverable object.” For a word to have meaning it has to refer to some thing: an object, an idea—something. Even the “yada, yada, yada” in the Seinfeld episode referred to the act of glossing over possibly important information.
How can the word terrorist used in this wildly imprecise way have any useful meaning? How can it lead to anything but imprecise and foolish thoughts? Can we actually think and talk about the important question of political violence with such a vague word? I don’t think so.
Fortunately, Orwell also said that sloppy thinking and use of meaningless words can be reversed, “if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.”
So, let’s take the trouble.
There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, perhaps because governments, the main source of agreement on questions like this, don’t want a definition that covers their own behavior. The US law against terrorism specifically exempts “activities undertaken by military forces of a state in the exercise of their official duties." This nation state exemption is a problem, but it’s a problem for another day.
All the definitions of terrorism we do have share three basic components: 1) violence committed by civilians against civilians 2) with the intent to cause fear of violence in a group or the general population 3) and done with the intent to bring about political change.
Applying this three-part test can bring some of the clarity Orwell suggested.
When Hamas and other fighters, non-state actor—civilians—broke out of Gaza on October 7, 2023, in addition to attacking soldiers they did commit violence against civilians. They did intend to create wider fear, and to bring about political change. It was terrorism. No question.
For the past two years any action by Hamas and other fighters in Gaza has been against uniformed Israeli soldiers. Further, the fighting was not intended to create wider fear in the general population, or with any hope of political change. It fails on all three counts. It is armed resistance to be sure, but it is not terrorism.
Acts of violence committed by Israeli soldiers against the people of Gaza may well be crimes against humanity and genocide. But, because of the nation-state exemption, actions by the Israeli army are not terrorism. If we are going to resurrect the word terrorism we must apply it precisely.
Ben Gvir wanted to bring the Flotilla activists to Ktziot prison, for the activists to see where Israelis keep terrorists, and to experience the conditions of convicted terrorists, the implication being that any inmate of Ktziot is a terrorist.
But the over 10,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are often in prison for minor infractions against uniformed Israeli soldiers that are not, by definition, terrorism. Or they are imprisoned for other offenses that fall far short of terrorism.
When those imprisoned Palestinians are convicted of acts that get them sent to places like Ktziot it’s by Israel’s military “courts” with a 99.74% conviction rate. Rubber stamps have a higher failure rate. Apparently the “judges” in these Israeli military “courts” never run out of ink.
And that’s when Palestinian prisoners actually have a trial. Many never see a charge, a lawyer, a judge, or trial before they are put in prison indefinitely. The notion that all the Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are terrorists strains the definition beyond the breaking point.
By contrast, every act of “settler” violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is violence by civilians against civilians intended to cause widespread fear among Palestinians, and intended to push Palestinians to leave their land—a political change. Avoiding those Orwellian “foolish thoughts,” and using clear language, with words that point to a “discoverable object,” leads us to this inescapable conclusion: West Bank “settler” violence is terrorism. Every murder, every punch, every burned car or olive tree or killed livestock is an act of terrorism.
Further, very often we hear countries like Iran accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism. The accusation is that they support non-state actors in the commission of terrorism. It’s a way of getting around the exclusion of nation states from the definition of terrorism.
Similarly, when West Bank “settler” violence is done with uniformed Israeli soldiers standing in the background, threatening deadly force against Palestinians who even think of defending themselves, those soldiers are backing up and supporting “settler” terrorism. This is the case in nearly every video you can find. Just look. Such “settler” violence is state sponsored terrorism.
Ben Gvir is no stranger to terrorism. The political party he started, Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, is a “legal rendition” of the outlawed Kach Party of Meir Kahane, the convicted bomb maker who founded the Jewish Defense League, a group responsible for many bombings in the United States.
Another hero of Ben Gvir is Baruch Goldstein, a Kachist who, in 1994 gunned down 29 people while they prayed at the al-Ibrahimi Mosque and injured 150 more. Ten percent of Israelis still consider Baruch Goldstein a national hero. Ben Gvir had a picture of Goldstein in his living room for years. That is until he had to clean up his act when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maneuvered to get Ben Gvir into the Knesset and created the Minister of National Security job for him.
But though he knows what it is, Ben Gvir doesn’t use the word terrorism to communicate clearly or honestly. Neither do Katz or Netanyahu.
When you’re actually trying to communicate, not only do you need to use words that point to a discoverable object, that actually mean something, the speaker needs to chose words that they hope roughly point to a similar object in the mind of the hearer.
But Orwell warns that in politics ambitious words,“are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person that uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
When Ben Gvir, Katz, and Netanyahu use the word terrorism to refer to any support for the people of Gaza, any action of resistance by Palestinians, or even Gazas’ bare existence in a place they have been ordered to leave, they know they are intentionally using a nearly meaningless word. They know this and rely upon the fact that most hearers think they are referring to something closer to that three-part definition. They intend to deceive and make serious thinking about these subjects more difficult and more, as Orwell said, “foolish."
Ben Gvir had the Jewish activists in the GSF flotilla, citizens of the United States, dragged by their ears to kneel before him and the Israeli flag. He screamed down at them that they were terrorists. Yes, the cabinet ministers of Israel actually behave this way. I have no idea what he meant by the word he was screaming. Neither does he.
In the 1946 essay Orwell said that “fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” These days we might, unfortunately, have some more concrete examples of fascism, and the word might now actually have some meaning.
But taking Orwell’s point, the word terrorist, most of the times it is used, as when Ben Gvir screamed it at Jewish activists he forced to their knees, simply means “bad guys I don’t like.” All too often that is how the word is used, and not just by Israelis. The word is wildly thrown around in American politics as well.
Political violence is a serious subject, and we need to be able to think about it and discuss it in a serious way. The word terrorism is too important to that discussion for such sloppy usage and deliberate misuse by politicians. This is especially true now, when the genocide in Gaza might be ending, or pausing, when the world might finally see what Israel has done to Gaza, and when the blame and denials escalate.
We need to be “willing to take the necessary trouble” to resurrect the word terrorism and try to move beyond these “foolish thoughts.”
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