Israel’s Death Penalty Law: “Jewish and Democratic”?

Ori Aronson is a professor of law and the director of the Menomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law at the Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law.

On 30 March 2026, in the midst of Israel’s latest war with Iran, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed the “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law.” The new Law imposes the death penalty on terrorists tried in either Israeli civilian courts or military courts in the West Bank, and it stipulates new rules as to the carrying out of a sentence of execution. The Law breaks with Israel’s longstanding rejection, both de jure and de facto, of the death penalty, an exceptional punishment used only once ever in the state’s history, against a Nazi criminal. The Law signifies the ascent of nationalist and populist politics in Israel in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks and the traumatic hostage crisis that ensued. It is a troubling retrenchment from Israel’s commitment to Jewish and democratic values and is likely to invoke a contested constitutional debate as its validity now goes before the Supreme Court.

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Believing in the Death Penalty?


Greg Marcar is a Research Affiliate at the Center for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago, where he is also a Teaching Fellow within the Theology program. Greg is a 2019 alumnus of the ICLRS Religion and the Rule of Law Young Scholars Fellowship Program.

This post is derived from Marcar’s article “Revisiting Death’s Difference: The Philosophical Anthropology of the U.S. Death Penalty and the Impossibility of Capital Due Process”, British Journal of American Legal Studies | Ahead of Print, 21 April 2020.

Introduction

Few judicial issues are as polarising in the U.S. as the death penalty. Akin perhaps to abortion, attitudes towards capital punishment can often approximate a litmus test for liberal and conservative dispositions. For many of its legal and political opponents, the death penalty is a quintessentially disproportionate punishment, and thus contrary to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments.” For many of its supporters, the death penalty is not only congruent with the Eighth Amendment (particularly under a historically-focussed “originalist” reading);[1] it also instantiates the moral principle that those who commit the most horrendous acts within society must face the ultimate sanction. Between these positions, the possibilities for mediation appear slim. This is also true within religious thought, where assertions concerning the dignity of every human being and the value of forgiveness are often mirrored by equally forceful assertions concerning the sanctity of human life and the need for a retributive punishment of murderers which reflects this sanctity.[2] (more…)

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