At the end of March, in the middle of the war with Iran and right as a contentious state budget received final approval, the Israeli Knesset passed a law making the death penalty the primary punishment for specific murderous acts of terror. The bill was approved with a vote of 62-48.
Many Israeli and international news outlets described the law as specifically targeting Palestinians, warning of mass executions and human rights violations. But what does the law actually say, and does it actually change much from the existing situation?
Read more: What does Judaism say about the death penalty?
What were the death penalty laws in Israel before the law passed?
The death penalty already existed in Israel before the new law was passed, but has only been implemented once in the country’s entire history.
Up until 1954, the death penalty could be imposed in murder cases. However, that year, the Knesset removed it from certain provisions, but not from the law books entirely. A death sentence could still be issued for:
- Cases of treason
- Violations of state sovereignty
- Transfers of national territory to another country
- Cases in which a person incited a war or aided the enemy in war
- Crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis or their accomplices in the Holocaust
- Acts of genocide or incitement to genocide, whether they are committed in Israeli territory or not.
The death penalty is also codified in the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, which have remained in effect throughout Israel’s history due to the country’s continuous state of war. Among the offenses that are punishable by death are: shooting at people or places, using explosives to hurt someone or damage property, carrying a firearm or explosive without a permit, or belonging to a group in which one or more members have violated the Regulations. Importantly, these regulations only apply in military courts, and prosecutors retain discretion over whether to try suspects in criminal or military court. In practice, such cases are almost always handled in criminal courts, meaning a different law, the Penal Law, is used to handle them.
The death penalty is also an option in the West Bank for certain murders, but only if the prosecution requests it and all judges trying the case unanimously agree to impose it. The judges also have to be of a certain rank to impose capital punishment. The death penalty has been issued in eight cases, but in each instance the sentence was commuted to life in prison before it could be carried out.
On Oct. 29, 1967, just a few months after Israel took over the West Bank in the Six-Day War, the Israeli government decided that, until further notice, civil and military prosecutors would be instructed not to seek the imposition of the death penalty in any case brought before civil or military courts. Israeli Professor Ron Dudai – whose expertise is in political violence, transitional justice, and human rights – noted that “The essence of this decision — refraining from using the death penalty but also not abolishing it — has remained the policy since then.”
Throughout the years, Israeli officials have often taken pride in this restraint from using capital punishment. In 1975, Haim Herzog, then Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, said: “We are proud of our humane approach … despite the pressures and provocations over the years in which the most heinous crimes have been committed by terrorists, we have never carried out the death penalty.”
Not everyone agreed with the policy of restraint, though. After the Coastal Road Massacre in 1978, in which 38 people were killed, many Israelis demanded the death penalty for the terrorists involved. A legal complication arose, however, because one of the two terrorists arrested was under the age of 18, meaning he could not be executed under Israeli law. Amnon Straschnov, a retired Israeli judge, explained that “To execute one young man and not the other, simply because of a few years, was not consistent with the Israeli sense of justice. In the end, despite the severe tragedy that occurred as a result of brutality against innocent people, the death penalty was still not invoked.”
Government officials have expressed support for the death penalty as well over the years, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1979, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1985, and several government ministers pushed for the imposition of the death penalty after the First Intifada. Nevertheless, none of these statements was ever turned into policy. In fact, so many attempts to change the law over the years failed that Dudai termed them a “penal fantasy,” describing this as “a symbolic expression of frustration and outrage, a form of safe release of emotion.”
“Penal fantasies are not geared at changing policy and, indeed, are conditioned by the lack of realistic prospects for their implementation,” Dudai explained. “They enable safe satisfaction, without facing the costs, risks, and drawbacks (and potential disappointment) involved in serious attempts at carrying them out.”
Has the death penalty ever been used in Israel?
That institutional reluctance has meant that, despite the death penalty’s presence across multiple areas of Israeli law, there has only been one legal execution in Israel’s history: the hanging of Adolf Eichmann in May 1962. Known as the “Architect” of the Holocaust and the Final Solution — the mass extermination of Jews during World War II —, Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Argentina and brought to stand trial in Israel, during which he was sentenced to death.
There is one other case of a death sentence being executed in Israel’s history, a haunting scandal which has shaped much of the discourse around capital punishment ever since: The execution of Meir Tobianski.
Tobianski served as an officer in the Haganah and the IDF. During the 1948 War of Independence, he came under suspicion of treason after several arms manufacturing facilities in Jerusalem, where he had worked, were hit by Jordanian attacks.
A group of officers, among them Isser Be’eri, the first director of Israeli military intelligence, took Tobianski to an isolated building near Jerusalem, accused him of passing information to the enemy, and sentenced him to death on the spot. He was executed by a firing squad that had already been assembled at the location.
A year later, Be’eri was tried and discharged from the IDF after he was charged with the killing of an Arab-Israeli who had served as an informer for the Haganah. Several months later, he was tried for Tobianski’s death as well. During the trial, Tobianski was exonerated. Be’eri was convicted, but received an immediate pardon from the president.
The shadow of scandal and a debate about ethics
The shadow of that hastily executed death sentence hung heavy over Israeli society for many years, shaping much of the debate on the topic ever since. The question of whether or not to implement the death penalty has been raised repeatedly throughout Israel’s history, including several times in recent years.
Those in favor of the death penalty argue that executing terrorists reduces the incentive for hostage-taking, since there would be no imprisoned terrorists to exchange, and it can serve as a broader deterrent against terrorism in general. Others supporters argue that death is simply the only just punishment for such crimes.
Opponents counter that the death penalty is irreversible: if an innocent person is wrongly convicted, there is no going back. They also argue that it is an inherently inhumane punishment. In terms of the fight against terrorism, some opponents have posited that the death penalty could exacerbate rather than deter terrorism, with executed terrorists becoming martyrs and cornered terrorists pushed to fight to the death.
Many critics argue as well that, in practice, proposals like the new law would be inflicted only on Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, a form of discrimination incompatible with a democratic state. They also point to the diplomatic issues that the death penalty could cause for the State of Israel as a reason not to implement it.
The debate around the death penalty is further complicated by the place of capital punishment in Jewish tradition. While the Torah sanctifies life, it also lists many sins that are punishable by death. However, the Sages who interpreted the Torah in the Talmud went to great lengths to make the death penalty nearly impossible to implement in practice.
Only a court of 23 ordained judges could try capital cases, and proceedings were designed to give every possible opportunity for acquittal, even on a technicality. In fact, the Talmud relates that a Sanhedrin (the highest judicial body in Jewish law) that conducted one execution every seven, or possibly even every 70, years was considered “destructive.”
Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva, two major Talmudic Sages, said that if they had been on the Sanhedrin, they would have never issued the death penalty. However, their colleague, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, disagreed, warning that such an approach would increase the number of murderers among the Jewish people as the punishment would lose its deterrent effect. (Mishnah Makkot 1:10)
Even when the death penalty was used historically, many restrictions were implemented to ensure the execution was as swift and painless as possible and that the body of the executed person was treated with the utmost respect.
The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides stressed that the death penalty could only be used in cases of absolute certainty. Even in a case in which a person who pursued another person with the express intent of killing them was found standing above the second person holding a knife dripping with blood, if the witnesses did not see the suspected assailant actively stab the second person, their testimony is not enough to warrant the death penalty.
Maimonides warned that if capital punishment was allowed for such cases, even when the level of doubt is nearly non-existent, then eventually it would be used for cases in which there was increasingly greater doubt about the defendant’s guilt, and innocents would be executed. “It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand sinners than to execute one innocent person,” Maimonides wrote in his Sefer Hamitzvot (Negative Commandment 290).
Before we go deeper, it’s worth reviewing what the new law actually says and what it changes in practice from the current situation.
What does the new law say?
The new law is actually an amendment to two existing laws: Israel’s Penal Law and the Military Order regarding Security Provisions [Consolidated Version] (Judea and Samaria) (No. 1651), 5770-2009.
The amendment to the Penal Law introduces the option of applying the death penalty to cases in which a person is convicted of murdering someone “with the goal of negating the existence of the State of Israel.” The courts may also choose to impose life in prison instead.
The amendment to the Military Order states that an offender from the West Bank who commits a murder which is considered a terrorist act under Israeli law “shall be sentenced to death and only death.” However, the law includes a caveat: the military court trying the case may impose a life sentence instead if it finds “special reasons” to do so. No definition for what qualifies as “special reasons” is included in the law. The amendment states explicitly that it does not apply to Israeli citizens or Israeli residents residing in the West Bank, who are subject to the Penal Law instead.
In contrast to the situation beforehand, the new amendment to the Military Order does not require the prosecution to recommend the death penalty, nor does it require all the judges trying the case to unanimously agree on the sentence. Instead, a majority ruling now suffices.
The law is also unique in that it applies only to non-Israeli residents of the West Bank and assailants in Israeli territory who commit murder “with the goal of negating the existence of the State of Israel.”
What does the new law change?
So what does the new law actually change? In practice, not that much.
In the West Bank, the change is the most concrete. Previously, the death penalty could only be imposed if the prosecution requested it and all judges agreed unanimously. The new law removes both requirements, making the death penalty the default sentence for certain murders and requiring only a majority ruling. It also removes the option to request a pardon or commutation from the relevant military commander and introduces a 90-day deadline for carrying out the sentence. These are significant procedural shifts that, in practice, lower the bar for execution, although judges still have considerable leeway through the mechanism of claiming “special reasons” to issue a life sentence instead.
In Israeli criminal courts, the change is smaller than it might appear at first glance. The new amendment introduces the option of the death penalty for murders committed “with the goal of negating the existence of the State of Israel.” However, this is an option, not a requirement, and the courts retain discretion to impose life imprisonment instead.
The vagueness of the “negating the existence of the State of Israel” condition makes it difficult to predict how broadly or narrowly prosecutors and judges will interpret it. Given the precedent established since the state’s founding, many may actively avoid invoking it.
Does the new law violate international law?
While many Western countries have stopped using the death sentence, international law does not prohibit its use.
Under Article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Israel has signed, the death penalty may be imposed “only for the most serious crimes” and cannot be applied to pregnant women or any person who was under 18 when the crime was committed. This article has been interpreted by the United Nations as prohibiting states from reintroducing the death penalty after abolishing it, or extending it to crimes not covered at the time the ICCPR was ratified. The ICCPR also requires that anyone sentenced to death have the right to seek a pardon or commutation.
In terms of the West Bank, Article 68 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on Civilians allows for the use of the death penalty in occupied territory only in cases of espionage, serious sabotage of military installations, or intentional offenses causing death, and only where those crimes were also punishable by death under the territory’s pre-occupation law. (In terms of the West Bank, it would depend on whether Jordanian law in 1967 applied the death penalty in such cases) According to Article 68, the death penalty cannot be issued against any person who was less than 18 years old when the crime was committed.
The new law, if used, may violate some aspects of these rules, as the law applies the death penalty to crimes not covered when Israel ratified the ICCPR in 1991, which may be a violation of the Covenant.
What does the Israeli public think?
The new law has been highly controversial, even though polling over the past decade has consistently shown majority support for the death penalty for terrorists among Jewish Israelis.
In July 2017, the Israel Democracy Institute found that 70% of Jewish Israelis supported the death penalty for terrorists convicted of murdering civilians. That level of support has remained high in recent years. More recently, Reichmann University’s Institute for Liberty and Responsibility found that in September 2023, 61.5% of Israelis supported the death penalty for terrorists convicted of murder, with this number rising to 67.3% in November 2023 before falling slightly to 64.9% in March 2024.
A November 2025 poll by the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization found that 81% of Jewish Israelis supported the death penalty for Hamas Nukhba terrorists who took part in the October 7 attacks.
However, this apparent high level of support for the death penalty comes with some caveats. A survey conducted by the Institute for National Security Studies in December 2025 found that 50% of Israelis believe that the death penalty would not deter terrorists from carrying out attacks.
The wording of survey questions also matters considerably. Two studies conducted by Israeli researchers from Ariel University and Zefat Academic College in 2021 and 2025 found that support dropped sharply when respondents were presented with a specific scenario rather than asked about capital punishment in the abstract.
In the 2025 study, each participant was shown a single scenario describing a particular terrorist attack — a stabbing, shooting, car-ramming, or arson — carried out by an offender whose ethnicity and gender were specified, and was asked to choose an appropriate punishment. Only 21.1% of respondents chose the death penalty. The 2021 study, using a similar methodology, found even lower overall support.
The researchers attributed the gap between their findings and other surveys in part to the nature of the question itself. They argued that conventional polling on a charged topic like the death penalty is susceptible to social desirability effects — that is, respondents tend to answer in the way they feel they should, rather than reflecting a more considered judgment. By embedding the question within a specific scenario involving multiple details, the design makes it harder for respondents to simply react to the concept of terrorism in the abstract. In other words, abstract polling may capture an emotional response to the idea of terrorism rather than a measured view about what punishment a specific case warrants.
In the 2021 study, the researchers argued that their findings suggest the Israeli public would not support laws requiring courts to seek the death penalty for terrorists. They suggested several possible explanations for the low support, including that Israelis may place greater value on the sanctity of life as expressed in Jewish tradition, or that capital punishment feels unfamiliar, given that it has been applied in Israel only once.
Experts divided
Researchers, analysts, and politicians have responded to the new law with a range of competing arguments.
In a position paper filed to the Knesset, the Israel Democracy Institute warned that the law is “illegal, immoral, and in opposition to Israel’s obligations under international law.”
The IDI described it as “an unusual law in the democratic world” and stressed that, because the amendment to the Defence Regulations applies only to Palestinians, it is discriminatory. The institute also argued that the “negating the existence of the State of Israel” condition was “very vague” and “not suitable for a criminal offense,” leaving it unclear how prosecutors could establish that a defendant met the threshold. The IDI additionally raised concerns about the removal of the unanimous ruling requirement, the removal of the option to seek a pardon from the military commander, and the 90-day execution deadline, all of which it said increased the risk of irreversible error.
“This is an unconstitutional proposal that contradicts the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty in its violation of human dignity and the sanctity of life, and contradicts the fundamental values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, which will constitute a stain on the State of Israel’s book of laws, will damage the state’s name in the democratic world, and will harm its foreign relations,” the IDI warned.
In another position paper about an earlier version of the law, the IDI emphasized that there is “no unambiguous research evidence to substantiate the claim that the death penalty deters potential offenders.” The Institute noted that, in the past, the Shin Bet, which did not express opposition to the current law, had warned that “the threat of the death penalty could itself increase the motivation of terrorist organizations to kidnap soldiers or civilians to prevent the execution of such sentences.” They noted as well that the Shin Bet had not presented a detailed argument explaining how the death penalty, as encoded in this law, would serve as a deterrent to terrorists.
In a joint statement published shortly before the law was passed, the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Germany, France, Italy, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom warned that the new law would “risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.”
“The death penalty is an inhumane and degrading form of punishment without any deterring effect. This is why we oppose the death penalty, whatever the circumstances around the world. The rejection of the death penalty is a fundamental value that unites us,” the foreign ministers stressed.
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, head of Tzohar’s Ethics Center, expressed support for imposing the death penalty for Nukhba terrorists, who are not included in the current law, but stressed that he didn’t support a blanket obligation to impose the death penalty on all terrorists.
“There is another angle to the question of the death penalty, and that is the impact of such legislation on Israeli society,” he explained. “There are a variety of reasons to oppose the law. For example, there is great controversy about the effectiveness of the death penalty in the deterrence test. In addition, there is a danger of an error in judgment, which would lead to the shedding of innocent blood. Finally, the question must be asked: would we want to see a profession of ‘executioner’ in Israeli society? I am not trying to reserve the death penalty for terrorists to protect them, but to protect us, Israeli society.
Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, former IDF Director of Military Prosecution for Judea and Samaria, argued in favor of the law, stressing that the current system “simply does not deter the terrorists.” He rejected arguments that most terrorists want to die as martyrs, saying that “based on almost three decades of experience, I can say with confidence that they are a small minority. For every suicide bomber, there are a plethora of other terrorists who don’t want to die.”
“The terrorists don’t mind being caught,” Hirsch added. “In prison, they get rich from the Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay-for-slay’ terror reward payments and establish their terror credentials, simply waiting for the day when their buddies will kidnap enough Jews to secure their release.”
The new law, Hirsch explained, primarily aims to make it easier for judges and prosecutors to issue and carry out death sentences and harder for judicial authorities to choose other punishments or block existing sentences.
Hirsch also rejected complaints from European leaders about the new law, arguing that the Europeans were being hypocritical because they weren’t equally calling for the Palestinian Authority to abolish the “pay for slay” policy. “Now that the law has passed, some Europeans will be amazed to see that the sky did not fall,” Hirsch said. “In contrast, potentially, the days in which Palestinian terrorists murdered Israelis with impunity could come to an end.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the law’s main supporters, celebrated its approval, even attempting to open a bottle of champagne on the plenum floor after the vote. “This is a day of justice for the victims and a day of deterrence for our enemies. No more revolving door for terrorists, but a clear decision. Whoever chooses terrorism chooses death,” Ben-Gvir said.
“From now on, every mother in Judea and Samaria will know that if her son goes out to murder, his sentence is the gallows,” Ben-Gvir added. “I say to the people of the European Union, who have applied pressure and threatened the State of Israel, ‘We are not afraid. We will not submit.’ We are in our country with our sovereignty and will protect our citizens.”
MK Limor Son Har-Melech, a member of Ben-Gvir’s right-wing Otzma Yehudit Party whose husband was murdered in a terrorist attack in 2003, described the new law as a “message of justice, deterrence and national responsibility.”
“This is also true Jewish morality. One that does not settle for momentary salvation but obligates ensuring that evil will not return to strike,” Son Har-Melech added. “I took it upon myself to do everything to prevent the next murder, and today we took an important step in that direction. This is a day when the State of Israel chose life.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid rejected the new law, arguing that because it wouldn’t apply retroactively, it wouldn’t even be relevant for the Hamas terrorists who committed the October 7th attacks.
Lapid added that he opposed the law on moral grounds as well, saying, “this law is a surrender to Hamas. This law is Hamas’s dream. This law is what Hamas wanted when it invaded Israel on October 7. We are not like Hamas, we are the exact opposite of Hamas. We did not come to the Middle East to accept Sharia law. We did not establish a Jewish state to accept the moral standards of radical Islam. Hamas’s great dream is that we will accept its culture of blood and death.”
MK Gilad Kariv, a member of the left-wing Democrats Party, described the law as “immoral,” arguing that it “contradicts the foundational values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and the provisions of international law that Israel has undertaken to uphold.”
“Those who hand out baklava and open champagne in the Knesset aren’t fighting terrorists – they are making themselves similar to them,” Kariv added in a later statement.
While the future remains uncertain, what is clear is that this law and the question of the death penalty in general are far from resolved issues in Israel. Both the public and politicians are divided on whether and how the death penalty should be implemented, and within each camp, there is a wide range of moral and legal nuance. Given the ambiguity of the new law and the depth of disagreement surrounding it, whether it will translate into actual executions or remain largely symbolic is a question that only time and the courts will answer.
