IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth signed a military order putting into force the Knesset’s death penalty legislation, mandating capital punishment by hanging for Palestinians in Judea and Samaria convicted of deadly terrorist attacks in military courts. The last time Israel executed anyone was in 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged. The law’s arrival has set off a global chorus of condemnation from European capitals, Arab governments, Israeli left-wing politicians, and domestic human rights organizations. Conspicuously missing from that outcry is any acknowledgment that the same people doing the condemning practice capital punishment themselves, and with considerably less restraint.
They also fail to acknowledge that the Jewish state has not only the right, but the moral and Biblical obligation, to impose the ultimate penalty on those who murder. Genesis 9:6 establishes the foundational principle: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man”. This is a mitzvah, a divine command rooted in the sanctity of human life itself, the logic being that because the murder victim bore the tzelem Elohim, the image of God, the murderer has committed an offense of cosmic dimensions. The Sages of the Talmud built an elaborate legal architecture around capital punishment in Masechet Sanhedrin, not to eliminate it, but to ensure it was carried out with the utmost gravity and precision. The Torah prescribes four forms of execution. Far from rejecting the death penalty, Jewish tradition treated it with the seriousness it deserves: a necessary tool of justice, wielded with great care.
What the Legislation Does and Does Not Do
The law, passed by a 62-47 Knesset vote in late March and now formally enacted, requires military courts prosecuting terrorists whose attacks resulted in death to impose the death penalty as the default sentence, with an escape valve of “special circumstances” permitting life imprisonment instead. The sentence requires only a simple majority of judges, must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, and eliminates the right of appeal. Defense Minister Israel Katz and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called the law “a clear and sharp change of policy after the October 7, 2023, massacre.” Katz put it plainly: “Terrorists who murder Jews will not sit in prison in pleasant conditions, will not wait for prisoner exchange deals, and will not dream of release; they will pay the heaviest price.”
Prisoner exchanges have made the death penalty necessary as a deterrent. The argument that capital punishment does not deter terrorism collapses under the weight of Israel’s own documented experience with the alternative. Israel has tried imprisonment. It has tried prisoner exchanges. The results speak for themselves. After the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian terrorists and detainees, Shin Bet statistics showed that 82% of those freed returned to terrorist activity. That is not a failure rate; it is a guarantee of future bloodshed baked into the policy. Among those specifically convicted of murder, the recidivism rate was approximately 80%. And yet Israel kept making deals. After the November 2023 hostage exchange in which 240 terrorists were freed, approximately 50% of those released to Judea and Samaria had already returned to terrorism within months. Since the year 2000, prisoners released for “goodwill” purposes alone have committed 30 terror attacks against Israel. A terrorist serving a life sentence does not stop being a terrorist. He waits. He recruits. He plans. And if a deal comes, he walks.
The name that settles this debate permanently is Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar was serving four life terms for the killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he suspected of cooperating with Israel when he was released as the most senior of the 1,027 prisoners in the 2011 Shalit deal. Israel even provided him life-saving brain surgery while he was in its custody. Upon returning to Gaza, his rapid rise to power began. In a speech following his release, Sinwar called on Hamas’s military wing to continue kidnapping Israeli soldiers to secure the release of more Palestinian prisoners, saying “the release of prisoners will only be achieved through the kidnapping of Jews.” Twelve years later, he made good on that blueprint. Sinwar was the architect of October 7, the massacre of 1,200 people, the rape and murder of women and children, and the burning of families alive in their homes. He was a man Israel had imprisoned, fed, and healed. A dead terrorist plans no massacres. A dead terrorist cannot be traded. Israel’s security establishment warns that the death penalty will not deter terrorism, but 82% recidivism rates and a liberated Sinwar are the security establishment’s own record.
There is a critical caveat that the law’s most enthusiastic supporters gloss over: the legislation explicitly does not apply retroactively. That means the Hamas terrorists who carried out the October 7 massacre, who burned families alive, beheaded soldiers, and gang-raped women, are not subject to this law. Their prosecution will be governed by a separate bill still moving through the Knesset. The law, as enacted, applies going forward to terrorists in Judea and Samaria tried in military courts.
The Critics and Their Glass Houses
The condemnations arrived on cue. The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement calling the legislation “de facto discriminatory” and warning that it “would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regard to democratic principles.” What they did not mention is that France abolished the death penalty in 1986, Germany in 1989, and Italy in 1989; all of them within living memory, not ancient history. These nations executed people well into the 20th century, including Nazi collaborators after World War II. Their opposition to capital punishment is a recent policy choice, not an eternal moral principle, and they have no standing to dictate to a Jewish state facing mass-casualty terrorism what justice must look like.
Then came the Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates issued a joint statement condemning the law as a “dangerous escalation” with a “discriminatory application against Palestinian prisoners.” The hypocrisy here is staggering. Saudi Arabia alone executed at least 356 people in 2025, setting a new national record, with Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, and Yemen all carrying out executions the same year. Almost all of the countries that signed the joint condemnation enforce the death penalty at home. Saudi Arabia executes people for drug offenses. Egypt executes people in mass trials. These governments’ concern for Palestinian lives, when it comes to opposing Israel, is entirely performative.
The Palestinian Authority, which “nominally governs” parts of Judea and Samaria, also denounced the law. The PA called it “a dangerous escalation” and declared that “Israel has no sovereignty over Palestinian land.” What the PA did not mention is that since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian National Authority has issued 131 death sentences against Palestinian civilians charged with various crimes, carrying out at least 13 executions in the West Bank. Hamas, which controls Gaza, has carried out 16 executions since resuming them in 2009. Hamas has executed Palestinians by hanging and firing squad for collaborating with Israel, and has handed down capital sentences through military tribunals that, according to human rights organizations, regularly relied on confessions extracted through torture. The PA and Hamas are not opponents of the death penalty. They are opponents of Jewish sovereignty.
“Rabbis for Human Rights” Gets the Law Wrong
Perhaps the most theologically tendentious reaction came from the organization “Rabbis for Human Rights,” which petitioned the High Court against the law and declared that “a death penalty policy runs contrary to the spirit of Jewish law and to the principle of the sanctity of life at its core.” This is not a reading of Jewish law. It is an inversion of it.
The Torah mandates the death penalty for murder. The Sages of the Talmud devoted an entire tractate, Sanhedrin, to the elaborate procedures surrounding capital punishment, including the four prescribed methods of execution: stoning, burning, beheading, and strangulation. The famous Mishnaic passage (Makkot 1:10), in which Rabbis Tarfon and Akiva declared they would never have executed anyone had they sat on the Sanhedrin, prompted the sharp retort from Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel: “They would have increased violence in Israel.” The Sages understood that refusing to execute murderers is not sanctifying life; it is endangering it. The Talmud’s procedural stringencies around capital cases were designed to ensure certainty of guilt, not to abolish the principle. To claim that Jewish law opposes the death penalty for murder is to claim that the Torah opposes itself.
The Legal and Political Complications
The law is not without its complexities. The condition requiring that the attack be carried out with the motive of “negating the existence of the State of Israel or the authority of the military commander in the area” may prove difficult to establish in court, leaving judges’ discretion to impose life imprisonment in many cases. Several organizations have petitioned the High Court of Justice, and the court ordered the state to respond by May 24. Knesset legal advisers have warned that the legislation could run afoul of the Geneva Conventions by denying convicted terrorists the ability to seek clemency. The IDF, the Shin Bet, and the Foreign Ministry all expressed opposition during the Knesset deliberations, arguing that capital punishment has not been shown to deter terrorism and may invite retaliation.
These are legitimate legal questions. But they are separate from the moral question, which National Security Committee chair MK Tzvika Fogel addressed directly on the Knesset floor: “We are not bloodthirsty and do not seek to kill; we are a people that sanctifies life, and precisely for that reason, we cannot allow ourselves to abandon lives.”
The One Nation That Got It Right
Notably absent from the chorus of condemnation was the United States. The Trump administration issued a statement that cut through the international noise: “The United States respects Israel’s sovereign right to determine its own laws and penalties for individuals convicted of terrorism. We trust that any such measures will be carried out with a fair trial and respect for all applicable fair trial guarantees.” That is not a tepid hedge; it is a recognition that a democratic ally under sustained terrorist assault has the right to set its own standards of justice. After years of American administrations reflexively scolding Israel, the contrast is stark.
The Jewish state has now drawn a line. A terrorist who carries out a murder in Judea and Samaria will face execution, not a prison sentence to be traded away in the next hostage deal. Whether the courts will actually impose that sentence, given the law’s evidentiary hurdles, remains to be seen. But the message has been sent. After October 7, after 1,200 dead and over 200 hostages dragged into Gaza, the State of Israel has decided that some acts of murder are beyond the reach of mercy.
