Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s highly accused Minister of National Security, appeared before the Israeli Parliament’s National Security Committee this month with a pin representing an hour pinned to the bottom of his jacket. This commission examined the flagship project of his party, the Judiciary, which consists of extending the death penalty already provided for in Israeli legislation to Palestinians who harm Israeli citizens. Although the law’s censor does not explicitly mention them, as written, they will be the only category that will apply under this new standard, which does not impose a similar sanction on Israelis who attack Palestinians.
Ben Gvir himself later clarified in a tweet that his gesture and that of his supporters, who also highlighted the pin, is a symbol of his “commitment to the approval of a law” for “terrorists” (the Palestinians) who, according to the writer, “deserve to die”. The day before, the legal advisers of the National Security Committee were able to note that the rubber is difficult to reconcile, on the ground, with the international laws signed by Israel, or even with the fundamental Israeli laws which serve as the Constitution.
According to his dictamen, the borrador practically obliges the courts to impose the death penalty in cases of assassination of Israelis, beyond the circumstances in which the events occur, which nullifies the discretionary power of the courts and even exceeds what is provided in Israeli legislation for those responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany.
None of the crimes provided for in Israeli laws and punishable by death now require courts to apply this death penalty, according to legal advisers. “Ni siquiera en la Ley de Castigo contra los Nazis y sus Collaboratadores. The courts always retain their discretion to impose a lighter sentence,” Subrayan. This norm against the Nazis was applied in one of the only cases in which Israel has applied capital punishment since the establishment of its state in 1948: the 1962 horror of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, previously kidnapped by Mosad in Buenos Aires.
They condemn those who aspire to Ben Gvir to mandatory death and his party will also only apply to Palestinians. Including those in the West Bank, occupied Palestinian territory, where they are subject to military legislation (including children) while the Jewish settlers who live there — illegally, according to international legislation — are protected by civil jurisdiction, which is much more guarantor.
The development of this legislation took a slow step on November 3, when the National Security Commission approved it on first reading, before going to the plenary session of the Israeli Parliament, where it is currently being considered. In a plenary session this summer, Ben Gvir assured that the little yellow soga that is Lucieron and his party comrades is “one of the options by which the law will apply the death penalty to terrorists”. Luego added that beyond the hour “there is an option for an electric stove and a lethal injection.”
The minister continued his intervention, remaining important in the face of criticism from the Israeli Medical Association, by proclaiming that he had received “calls from scientists from doctors” who proposed applying the death penalty to the convicts. “He told me, ‘Itamar, I’ll just say it when,’” the National Security official said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the bill of his most radical partners. The editor-in-chief is also supported by the domestic security and intelligence service, the Shin Bet, according to information provided by its director, David Zini, to the government in November. This intelligence service has been operating according to the standard for years.
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Minister Ben Gvir, himself a settler who lives in the Kiriat Arba settlement near the West Bank city of Hebron, is the highest-ranking representative of the Israeli nationalist far-right and radical movement that aspires to colonize and annex Gaza and the West Bank (the other occupied territory, East Jerusalem, was illegally annexed by Israel in 1980).
The success of his party and the gradual normalization of ideas that years ago were considered extremist in Israel illustrate the derechization of a society that reached its peak after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and the Israeli response in the form of an offensive in Gaza, which left more than 70,000 dead. A few years ago, this minister had in his cabinet a portrait of Baruj Goldstein, the settler who, in 1994, shot dead 29 Palestinians while opening fire on the crowd in a Hebron mosque. For Ben Gvir, Goldstein is “a hero”, in his own words.
The climax of this ultra discourse in Israel caused the holder of National Security to abandon the margins of Israeli politics to locate himself at its center and enter the government coalition of Benjamín Netanyahu, following the 2022 elections. Gaza and the West Bank.
Only human rights organizations and the indifferent Israeli government criticized the fact that Ben Gvir appeared in Parliament with a small soga. These few critical voices were highlighted in addition to the color of the pin: yellow, as well as the shade of this tone which, in recent years, has symbolized the clamor for the return to Israel of those captured by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups on October 7, 2023. The soga symbol is also one that uses the American racist organization, Ku Klux Klan.
The newspaper Haaretzwhose editorial line is part of centralized and moderate Zionism, this year took up the criticisms of the Israeli research institute Zulat for equality and human rights. This organization believes that the approval of the law would tend to mean that the death penalty “would not be inflicted on the accused for his responsibility in the act, but for his national identity and that of the victim”, which would consecrate a “jerarquía” in the case. The group compares this law in the draft with “Nazi legislation”.
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