URGENT INTERNATIONAL STATEMENT
The Israeli Knesset is advancing a law that mandates execution by hanging for Palestinian prisoners, when Israelis convicted of the same crime would get life imprisonment. The bill passed its first reading by a vote of 39 to 16 (Times of Israel). Haaretz confirmed it: same crime, two sentences, determined entirely by ethnicity. This bill strips all judicial discretion, eliminates presidential pardon, requires hanging within 90 days, and applies only to Palestinians in a dual-court system that explicitly exempts Israeli settlers (Adalah).
It is important to note that capital punishment is a punitive measure that the rest of the world has spent decades dismantling. Over two-thirds of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In fact, even Israel has only carried out one civil execution in its entire history. That the Israeli parliament is now reinstating the capital punishment, as special treatment for Palestinians, is both racialized and discriminatory. The minister driving this bill, Itamar Ben Gvir, convicted of incitement to racism under Israeli law, wore a noose pendant to parliament and handed out sweets after the vote in celebration. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Euro-Med Monitor, and even Israel’s own Justice Ministry have all declared this legislation to be unlawful. The Fourth Geneva Convention also prohibits an occupying power from imposing the death penalty on protected persons. Every legal authority has said no. The bill is advancing anyway.
Palestinian detainees are not criminals. Under international humanitarian law, they are prisoners of a decades-long military occupation, protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention who should never have faced military tribunals in the first place. Many of them should have been released long ago under signed agreements between the parties. Instead, over 10,000 Palestinians remain imprisoned, thousands under administrative detention, held without charge, without trial, indefinitely renewable (Adalah). Among them are children as young as 14. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories B’Tselem has documented at least 12 facilities operating as systematic torture camps. The UN Committee Against Torture found a “de facto State policy of organized and widespread torture” that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity. At least 98 Palestinians have died in custody since October 2023. The ICRC has been barred from all visits for over 28 months. These are prisoners of war held in torture camps, denied the protections granted them by every international convention. And now Israel claims the legal authority to hang them.
While Israel advances this racial execution law, the United States is rewarding it with the largest military aid package in history. Since October 2023, the U.S. has sent $21.7 billion to Israel’s military, nearly six times the normal annual rate, delivered on 800 transport planes and 140 ships carrying 90,000 tons of weapons (Brown University / Quincy Institute). Every bomb, every bullet, every dollar says the same thing: carry on. America is not a bystander. It is the underwriter of this violence. And as long as the money flows without condition, Israel has no reason to stop. Not the torture. Not the detention of children. Not the executions, it is now being written into law.
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International and US citizens: Write to the President and Vice President of the United States. Follow this link
Everyone: Write to your own foreign ministry. Contact the U.S. Embassy in your country. Urge your professional associations to speak.
The people of Palestine are not asking for your pity. They are asking you to stop paying for the rope.
Palestine-Global Mental Health Network • “No Healing Without Liberation”
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