Payback Against Palestinian Terrorists

As if the world needed another reason to question Israel’s legitimacy, the Knesset approved a Death Penalty for Terrorists Law on March 30. Pursuant to the law, from now on terrorists, who are no ordinary criminals, will be hanged for the extreme criminality that constitutes acts of terror.

Capital punishment will be mandatory. Judges will have no discretion on whether to impose a death sentence. The law applies primarily to Palestinians, including those living in the West Bank. And the law contemplates no appellate review. The judgment to end the life of a terrorist will be final.

Islamists, no matter where you live, are now on notice: commit a terrorist act against the State of Israel and its people, and if you’re not assassinated on the spot, you will find yourself in an Israeli courtroom facing a guaranteed appointment with the hangman’s noose.

Islamists, no matter where you live, are now on notice: commit a terrorist act against the State of Israel and its people, and if you’re not assassinated on the spot, you will find yourself in an Israeli courtroom facing a guaranteed appointment with the hangman’s noose.

When the law was announced, condemnation against Israel was swift but not widely covered. (A blessing of the war in Iran.) One immediate objection is that Jews living in the West Bank who intentionally kill Palestinians would not be subject to the law. They would be deemed ordinary murderers and treated under the criminal laws of the state where the death penalty is not applied.

Worse still, just a few weeks ago, National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir gleefully unveiled the construction of the hanging facility, as if it was a new stadium for bread and circuses. He showcased the viewing galleries for families who have lost loved ones to terrorism and will now have a front row seat in witnessing terrorists receive their just deserts.

Shouldn’t the death penalty be treated with more solemnity and emotional restraint?

It all may amount to nothing given that Israel is a representative democracy with a Supreme Court empowered to overturn governmental decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court is given far less latitude in the arena of our checks and balances. Don’t be surprised if Israel’s High Court strikes down the death penalty because it conflicts with Israel’s Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty.

Most Israelis are displeased that the law does not apply retroactively. That means Hamas terrorists and their civilian henchmen who carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre will have escaped a punishment adopted specifically with them in mind. Those responsible for 10/7, if not already dead or at large, will remain in Israeli prisons.

Before now, Israel, like most Western nations, did not legalize capital punishment—except in one special case: Nazis discovered after the State of Israel was established in 1948. Soon thereafter, in 1950, the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law was enacted.

For obvious reasons, that law allowed for retroactive punishment since the Third Reich had already almost achieved the Final Solution. Moreover, Israel’s courts were granted universal jurisdiction, since Nazis were unlikely to ever be found living in Israel as citizens of the Jewish state. The law also borrowed from the Nuremberg Trials by adopting crimes against humanity as the principal cause of action.

Under this law, the architect of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann, was abducted in Argentina, tried and then executed in Israel in 1962. Until now, he was the only civilian ever sentenced to death in Israel.

More broadly, capital punishment has been in decline, especially around the Western world. The vast majority of countries, 147, have abolished the death penalty. A mere 17 countries executed criminals in 2025. One nation, Iran, led the others by far in carrying out the death sentences—2,707. For those squeamish about war, but even more disdainful of the death penalty, you now have a reason to support America’s hostilities in the Persian Gulf.

European nations have all but abolished the death penalty. The United States, however, did not follow suit. It remains in effect under federal law. The sovereignty and police powers of each state, however, have resulted in uneven regional application. A slight majority of Americans support capital punishment, which is reflected in 27 states (predominately in the South) allowing for it, with 23 states, plus Washington, D.C., opposed.

It is true that Gvir’s jubilation over the finished product where captured terrorists might, from now on, take their final breaths, is undignified for a public official.

But was he morally wrong? In America, states that execute those whose crimes place them in the category of the “worst-of-the-worst” receive far less public resistance and are often attended by cries of joy. This was true with the surviving Boston Marathan Bomber, one of the two D.C. Snipers, the two escaped felons who brutally raped and murdered a mother and two of her young daughters in Cheshire, Connecticut, and the strangulation in prison of the infamous pedophilic Boston priest, John Geoghan.

Very few people were sorry to see them go, and these death sentences all took place in blue states that ordinarily have reservations about taking a life—even when it comes to the state’s criminal population. It must be that extraordinary crimes, morally and emotionally, call for extraordinary punitive measures.

I discuss the legal basis for when capital punishment may, in fact, be morally incumbent, in one of my earlier books, “Payback: The Case for Revenge.” States that execute their worst-of-the-worst are not committing acts of murder; they are simply carrying out deserved punishments against those who have already taken a life and must, due to their own moral blameworthiness, be punished commensurate with that wrong.

The human brain is hardwired for justice and fairness—it knows when payback is owed, measure-for-measure. And it becomes both morally and emotionally unbearable for most people to see justice—whether in the form of a just legal resolution or resort to equally appropriate self-help—left undone.

If vengeance is wrong, as so many instinctively believe, why are revenge movies so wildly popular? People don’t walk out of theaters in disgust when, before the closing credits, the avenger successfully and satisfyingly settles the score. They are, instead, transfixed until the wrong is avenged and the wrongdoer receives what he is owed, whether it is in “Gladiator,” “Death Wish,” “Unforgiven,” “The Searchers,” “Peppermint” or “The Patriot.”

Even Shakespeare recognized the compulsion of unpunished crimes, and the insatiable need to see full vindication of moral injury. Hamlet’s madness will only grow worse until his father’s murder is avenged.

Terrorism is of such an extraordinary nature that it requires little moral justification to apply the death penalty. Osama bin Laden never received his day in court. Navy Seal Team Six was ordered to eliminate the target on sight. Did anyone in America protest such extrajudicial action? I recall street celebrations, instead.

There were similar scant misgivings over the drone strike that took the life of Islamist cleric Anwar al‑Awlaki, in Yemen — the first time the United States intentionally killed one of its own citizens!

Sometimes the lunacy in the logic that all life is equally precious is appropriately dispensed with.

There are those who believe that punishment should only be imposed if it can be shown to deter future crimes. When Americans are surveyed about what should be done with the worst of their criminals, however, most reply that just deserts, and not deterrence or rehabilitation, serves as their guiding principle.

It is unlikely that Israel’s new law will have much effect in deterring terrorists from their date with martyrdom. Time and again we are reminded that Islamic terrorists can neither be deterred nor rehabilitated.

And lifetime prison sentences backfire whenever Hamas succeeds in kidnapping an IDF soldier. Israel is then forced into the unconscionable exchange of one of its soldiers for 1,000 terrorists. The architect of 10/7 was freed from prison under just such a twisted, disproportionate arrangement.

Lifetime prison sentences backfire whenever Hamas succeeds in kidnapping an IDF soldier. Israel is then forced into the unconscionable exchange of one of its soldiers for 1,000 terrorists.

Would it not be better to take those bargaining chips off the table? Eliminate the leverage and, at the same time, deliver the poetic justice of just deserts?

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is a contributing writer for White Rose magazine. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”