Amira Hass

Look, you don't need experts to know that this law only applies to Palestinians.

First of all, Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank are under Israeli civil law, not military law.

And if they commit a felony or a crime, they are being prosecuted in Israeli civil courts, not military courts.

So this is one thing.

The second thing is that in Israel proper, the Israeli civil court is mandated to sentence to death anybody who committed the crime of murder and terror in the intent to deny the existence of Israel, of the state of Israel.

And this is kind of a code, a euphemism for saying that this is

Only a Palestinian can intend such a thing and not a Jew.

And the government of this state are boasting about the law that they have passed or have accepted, this law of death penalty.

By hanging.

Those convicted have to be hanged within 90 days without the possibility of an appeal.

The guards of the Israeli prison service are supposed to hang them.

They will be there and they will be hooded.

Their faces will be covered.

They will not be seen by the doctors who will be present or the other officials that will be present.

They will not be known or seen.

But if you look at the wording of the text, it talks about those convicted of killing Israelis with the, quote, intent to negate the existence of the state of Israel, meaning it won't apply to extremist Israelis who kill Palestinians like we've been seeing recently in the West Bank, for example.

main argument that they give is that this law is supposed to deter Palestinians from committing terrorist attacks, as they are called in Israel.

In a recorded message that Israeli citizens have received, including myself,

Over the phone, we heard the voice, the very cheerful voice of the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvil, where he said he was proud about the passing of this law that his party were promoting for several years already.

But this is complete nonsense because many of the Palestinians who do resort to very extreme acts of killing are known to be ready to die.