Gallows being constructed

Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the country’s prisons and national police force, recently posted a video on Instagram showing the construction of a gallows facility intended to execute Palestinian terrorists, including those found guilty of war crimes for their role in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

The video shows the ultra-nationalist politician standing at an undisclosed site – reportedly near a maximum-security prison complex in central Israel – pointing to construction activity to prepare for mass hangings. Ben-Gvir stated that the execution centre will feature viewing booths for the families of terrorism victims.

“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons – we kept it,” Ben-Gvir says in the video. “I promised to pass the death penalty for terrorists law – we did. And now, the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

The construction follows legislation passed by Israel’s Knesset on March 30, allowing the death penalty for terror offences that result in death. The law mainly covers Israeli military courts, which largely try Palestinians. Under the legislation, military courts are required to impose the death penalty for fatal terror offences unless judges determine that exceptional circumstances warrant life imprisonment instead.

Alongside the death penalty law, Israel also passed legislation earlier this year establishing a military tribunal for Palestinians accused of atrocities during the Oct. 7 attacks on border kibbutzim and cities. The tribunal can bring charges including genocide under Israel’s 1950 law, violations of Israeli sovereignty, causing war, and other offences.

Although Israel has had the death penalty on its books, it has been carried out only once – on June 1, 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged and cremated. The death penalty was mostly abolished in 1954, but, technically, it has remained permissible for crimes against humanity or the Jewish people, as well as under certain circumstances under martial law.

The gallows announcement came days after Ben-Gvir said he would “turn the world upside-down” to help former Gaza Strip hostage Rom Braslavski personally execute his alleged captor. 

In the same podcast, Ben-Gvir called for Israel to carry out “30 to 40” targeted assassinations in Gaza every night. He disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s scaling back of military strikes.

Within Israel, there are legal challenges, protests and condemnations of the death penalty and related laws. 

Gil Zohar is a journalist and tour guide who lives in Jerusalem.