Death penalty bill will severely harm Israel’s security, former security and legal officials say

Israeli police outside Ofer military prison near Jerusalem, October 2025

Noa Shpigel reports in Haaretz on 25 November 2025:

Former senior officials in the defense and justice establishments penned an open letter on Tuesday, warning that a new bill legalizing the death penalty for terrorists would harm national security.

The letter, addressed to the Knesset’s National Security Committee Chairman MK Tzvika Foghel (Otzma Yehudit), was signed by former Shin Bet security service directors Ami Ayalon and Carmi Gillon; former Shin Bet legal adviser Eli Bahar; former Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber; and other former senior officials.

“The proposal will severely damage the security of Israel and its citizens, and could endanger Jews and Israelis around the world,” the letter read, noting it would also “harm Israel’s international status as part of the family of democratic nations.”  The former officials called the death penalty “unacceptable in terms of legal norms, therefore, unconstitutional.” They expressed concern that the measure would deepen divisions in Israeli society and called for shelving the bill.

The bill – proposed separately by MK Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit) and MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beiteinu) – would allow a judge to sentence a terrorist, who had killed Jews because of their identity, to death by lethal injection within 90 days of the ruling, with no option to appeal.

New Shin Bet director David Zini, a far-right figure appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the attempted ouster of Ronen Bar, went against years of the agency’s policy last week by backing the death penalty.

Proponents of the law argue that it would curb acts of terrorism and cite the cease-fire in Gaza as an opportunity to execute Palestinian terrorists without captors killing Israeli hostages in response.

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