Not satisfied it seems with the continued genocide of Palestinians, Israel is now looking to execute Palestinian prisoners by introducing a death penalty law.

And, of course, you won’t have read much, or anything, about this because the Australian political class and most of our media (even so-called leftist publications like The Guardian) self-censor to appease the Zionist lobby in this country. This is despite Australia being implacably opposed to the death penalty and saying so loudly when it suits.

On 28 September, the website of the Israeli parliament, The Knesset. reported that the National Security Committee of the Knesset, “chaired by MK Tzvika Foghel (Otzma Yehudit), voted to approve the Penal Bill (Amendment – Death Penalty for Terrorists) for first reading, despite the objection of the Knesset’s legal advisers”. Foghel has been previously investigated for inciting terror after he claimed in 2022 “we need burning villages when the IDF doesn’t act”. His party is overtly racist.

According to the report on the Knesset website, the “bill proposes that a terrorist convicted of murder motivated by racism or hostility toward a particular public, and under circumstances where the act was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their homeland, shall be sentenced to death – mandatorily, not optionally or at the court’s discretion”. Horrific enough?

No. The extent to which Israel can claim to be a democracy is well and truly well past its use-by date when it proposes a law that “seeks to establish that the death penalty may be imposed by a majority of the judges, and that a final death sentence may not be commuted”. In other words, while you can successfully argue commutation in countries such as Indonesia and in many US states, this will be not so in Israel if this bill becomes law.

And it might indeed become law because the wanted war criminal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who apparently originally didn’t want the bill on the table at the moment (because he is a psychopath, it wasn’t for any moral reason) has now pivoted. According to media reports earlier this week, Gal Hirsch, Jerusalem’s co-ordinator for the captives and missing is saying that the “prime minister’s position is in favour of the proposed law”.

Of course, as noted above, the bill is a product of the extreme-right politicians who form part of Netanyahu’s genocide machine. The usual lie about a death penalty being a deterrent to “terrorism” is being trotted out and, of course, as we have seen in this country, when it comes to claims a draconian law will deter terrorism, only a few politicians of conscience have the courage to oppose it.

Just how linked to the genocide of Palestinians this proposed law is becomes evident when you track the history of the death penalty in Israel. The US Department of Justice provides a convenient summary of the history and current position. It notes that 71 years ago, in 1954 Israel abolished the death penalty for murder “on the basis of consideration of humanitarian, liberal and progressive views of penology”. It remains on the statute books, but has only been used once since Israel became a nation in 1948.

The only occasions where the death penalty becomes mandatory is under laws concerning Nazis and Nazi collaborators and, in a case of sick irony, for genocide. However, currently the “law provides for the Supreme Court to conduct an automatic mandatory review when a death sentence is imposed. Israel’s president retains the power to grant a pardon, remit or commute all sentences including the death penalty”.

As an aside, albeit an important one, where is the investigation and examination of a prosecution of Netanyahu and his fellow genocide enablers by the Israeli legal system? The law to do it exists.

The proposed new law could have been lifted from the statute books of any number of authoritarian regimes around the world. If it becomes a reality, the Israeli criminal justice system, which operates on the apartheid principle, will simply fit up Palestinians so that they are found guilty of murder that was motivated by politics and ideology. Do not believe for a moment the arrant nonsense of lawyers around the world, including here in Australia, that Israel is committed to the rule of law. It is as committed to that bedrock concept as the apartheid regime was in South Africa.

Australia has, to its credit, been a global leader in opposing the death penalty. Last year Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that “Australia opposes the death penalty in all circumstances for all peoples". This is a position that has bipartisan support. So if Israel passes this horrific death penalty law, it is yet another reason for Canberra to end its timidity and impose sanctions on this rogue state.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.