Yesterday, the Israeli parliament experienced one of the most tense moments in its recent history when relatives of the more than 230 hostages held by Hamas asked far-right parliamentarians to abandon the debate to recover the death penalty in the country, a project of law that has been open since March of this year. In an angry discussion, those close to people who remain in the hands of the jihadists asked radical political representatives to “stop thinking about killing Arabs and start worrying about saving Jews.” The far right, however, ignored their voices.
The death penalty debate is driven by the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, a far-right party, linked to organizations that the United States has considered terrorist and completely residual until Netanyahu included it in his coalition. The importance of the party was reinforced with the appointment of one of its leaders, Ben Gvir, as Minister of National Security.
Zionist and Orthodox
At other times, proposals of this type have been discarded without further problems, since it is a measure that only the most radical groups of Zionism and religious orthodoxy defend. However, the Otzma Yehudit party managed to push through its death penalty law in March as the opposition had walked out of parliament in protest of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s efforts to control the Supreme Court. In this way, the ultra-radical party managed to support a bill that plans to apply the death penalty to those who take the lives of Jewish citizens for political and religious reasons. A few days ago, Gvir once again defended his death penalty project, but this time he did so in the context of the Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which 1,400 people died and more than 200 kidnappings took place. The invasion of Gaza after that attack has already caused more than 15,000 deaths.
The parliamentary discussion on the death penalty took place in the Knesset National Security Committee, in which the relatives of some of those kidnapped by Hamas participated. In their statements, they accused the Otzma Yehudit party of not taking into account the lives of captives in the hands of Palestinian jihadists. The spokesman for Netanyahu’s opposition, the centrist and secular Yair Laid, accused those promoting the death penalty of “lacking the slightest shame.” In his reaction, the radicals attacked the relatives of the kidnapped people, whom they accused of not being the only representatives of the pain felt in Israel after the Hamas attacks. The Minister of Education, Yoav Kisch, a member of Likud, Netanyahu’s party, assured that this law will not go ahead.
Adolf Eichmann
This debate comes at a time when there is speculation that Israel could reach an agreement with Hamas to release the hostages. A pact of this type would allow Netanyahu to take pressure off the relatives’ demands. According to experts in the region, the political campaigns launched by those close to him could represent an erosion of Netanyahu’s cabinet that will increase every day. Furthermore, these types of controversies generate an increasingly greater division in Israeli politics, which together with issues such as the bombings of Gaza or Netanyahu’s management, can weaken national unity in the face of terrorism.
The death penalty was abolished in Israel in 1954, but it left some caveats linked to people who had been sentenced for reasons related to the Holocaust. The only time the death penalty has been applied in the country was under these rules and was to execute the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962. Previously, in 1948, it was applied to a spy during the war of independence.
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