The Death Penalty: Cruel, Unjust, and Racist
- Noa Sattath
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
November 24, 2025
Dear friend,
Throughout Israel’s history, only one person has been sentenced to death: Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi, and one of the major architects and facilitators of the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos, concentration camps, and extermination camps during the Holocaust. In reports to the United Nations and in other publications, Israel has justifiably taken pride in the fact that the death penalty was imposed only once, in a very specific, exceptional case, and that the prosecution has refrained from requesting its imposition ever since.
If the current government gets its way, that is about to change. Just over a week ago, a bill passed its first (of three) readings in the Knesset that seeks to impose the death penalty on defendants convicted of murder motivated by nationalism. The advancement of this law is part of a political deal made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the extremist Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir to keep Ben Gvir from leaving the government coalition, thereby forcing elections. Unsurprisingly, the bill has all of the hallmarks of a Ben Gvir initiative: it is cruel, unjust, and racist.
According to the current draft of the bill, the death sentence would be the mandatory punishment (judges would not be able to use their own discretion in sentencing—another way in which the government is seeking to weaken the judiciary), to be carried out within 90 days and without the possibility of appeal. The current wording of the bill and its explanatory notes, which state that it was formulated because of the “murder of Jews, simply because they are Jews” makes it clear that the death penalty would be imposed only on Palestinians.
ACRI opposes the death penalty, full stop. It is a moral stain on societies that enact it, and stands in complete opposition to the most basic human rights. The death penalty renders the law a tool of violence in the hands of the authorities, and normalizes violence, extremism, and indifference to human dignity and the value of life. Those of you in the US or other countries that still carry out the death penalty know the ways in which it can be misused: that it is imposed more often on minorities and is prone to error. The death penalty is not only morally harmful to society, it also harms those who hand down the sentence and those responsible for carrying out the execution.
As terrible as this bill is, it is also another part of a larger policy of vengeance and cruelty towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Since the outbreak of the war, Palestinian prisoners and detainees have been subject to abuse, violence, starvation, prolonged time in handcuffs, unsanitary living conditions and have been denied medical treatment, meetings with lawyers, and access to the Red Cross. If this bill passes, there will now be a legal pretext for executing them. At ACRI we are working hard, both locally and internationally, to oppose this bill and to stop its passage. And if, in spite of our efforts, the bill does pass, we will be ready with a petition to the Supreme Court for its revocation.
Together, we must fight for a world that respects the sanctity of human life—all human life. Donate Now.
