Israel’s new execution law is a new stage in its genocide of Palestinians
JVL Introduction
Global Jews for Palestine, to which JVL belongs, has issued this statement on Israel’s apartheid execution law and demand that:
Western governments must impose severe sanctions immediately!
“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described the law as a “war crime” and “patently inconsistent” with international obligations. From the ban on UNRWA to systemic torture and the illegal wars in Lebanon and Iran, Israel’s actions threaten the entire global rules-based order established after World War II.”
The UK government, like far too many others seem to think that “tut tutting” on this terrible law as on Israel’s many violations of international humanitarian law, such as the occupation, the genocide, settler violence and much more is enough. It is not. The demand for sanctions is reasonable and justified. The government has applied sanctions on Russia, for example but not on Israel. It is long past time.
LL
The Israeli Knesset has passed a racist bill mandating the death penalty for Palestinians. The law stipulates that execution is mandatory for judges to sentence Palestinians, even if the prosecution does not seek it, with a 90-day window for implementation. This law applies to any Palestinian who “willfully or negligently” causes the death of an Israeli. Given that Palestinians are fighting against a settler colonial regime, a liberation struggle, this law is completely illegal in International Human rights law. Such vague criteria — where “negligently” can mean almost anything — represent a classic inversion of colonial culpability. By projecting guilt onto the colonized, the state masks the fact that most Israelis have passively colluded in a genocide that has caused thousands of Palestinian deaths. Furthermore, given the documented evidence of systemic torture in Israeli prisons, we must ask: how many will be hanged because of false or forced confessions?
This law is a radical leap, yet it is not surprising. It follows an alarming rise in settler violence in the West Bank, legislative moves toward de facto annexation, and a legal system already featuring over 50 laws that discriminate between Jews and non-Jews. This is probably the most racist law since Nazi Germany, more racist than any law in apartheid South Africa.
International bodies, including the UN, Oxfam, and Amnesty International, have warned that these measures violate the Geneva Conventions and the right to life. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described the law as a “war crime” and “patently inconsistent” with international obligations. From the ban on UNRWA to systemic torture and the illegal wars in Lebanon and Iran, Israel’s actions threaten the entire global rules-based order established after World War II.
The EU-Israel Association Agreement requires adherence to human rights—a standard that Israel has definitively breached over several decades, all the more blatantly with this new law. As Global Jews for Palestine, we demand that the EU suspend its Association Agreement. We also call on all governments to impose immediate and severe sanctions, including a complete arms embargo. We applaud the growing global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, targeting economic, political, academic and cultural complicity with the Israeli settler-colonial apartheid regime. Palestinians have called for a day of action on 17th April against this draconian law on Palestinian Prisoners day.
Global Jews for Palestine, representing 25 organizations across six continents, is appalled by the State of Israel’s criminal behavior. As activists for social justice, we declare that Israel does not act in our name.
Hold Israel accountable now!
Read this statement on our website here:
We are Jews from many countries, who are members of local, national and international networks and organizations. We are multi-ethnic and multigenerational and our members embrace a broad range of viewpoints on Jewish religious and ethical traditions. We are connected by our involvement in the struggle for Palestinian rights, and by our determination to work for justice. We oppose Zionism and all forms of racism and colonialism.
We believe that it is our particular responsibility to challenge Jewish organizations whose alliances and actions undermine Palestinian human and national rights, promote Jewish exceptionalism, and overturn Jewish social justice traditions. At the heart of our work is the fight for Palestinian liberation and the struggle for a world free of racial and ethnic hierarchy, colonial domination, and unbridled militarism.
What kind of God would choose Israeli Jews as his/her people? Or, what kind of God would choose any particular nation/race/religion over and above all others? A Trump-style travesty of an entity? Certainly not my idea of any God worth believing in.
We are witnessing the end game of the “Israel Colonial Project”. Norman Finkelstein pointed out recently, that Hitlers Nazis had the last “One Ethnicity Only” death sentence. Evil and Satanic, are words too kind to describe this inhuman supremacist fascist regime.
I sympathise with the two earlier commentators. However, these are political and humanitarian issues. In particular, ‘evil’ has a generalised rather than specific sense; and ‘satanic’ refers to a character not involved in the actions. We should be writing about imperialist and colonialist; these terms refer to specific economic, political and social actions. They also identify the advanced capitalist states who are ultimately responsible, like our own Britain. ‘Lega cy of Violence’, by Caroline Elkins [Vintage 2023] spells out in detail Britain’s colonial operations, now extended by the Zionists.
Thanks Keith but I stand by my earlier comment.