‘The rope is for Arabs only’
JVL Introduction
Palestinian academic Abdaljawad Omar puts Israel’s new death penalty law in context.
First, it “legalizes an already existing policy of executions” but now sets a clearer timetable for them.
Second, it is a British invention and custom, through and through. This was how Britain executed its mandate.
As Omar says: “official policy and unofficial violence never operated separately As British courts hanged men with increasing speed and confidence, the threshold for what soldiers felt permitted to do in the field quietly fell.”
As Matthew Hughes, historian of Britain’s pacification of Palestine has shown, Britain’s mandate military courts were built for speed above everything.
Israel is drawing from this old colonial well. It “didn’t simply inherit British practices, but kept them alive for over 70 years. It now reaches back to retrieve one of the darkest of these practices.”
RK
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Thu 2 Apr 2026. Read the original here.
‘The rope is for Arabs only’: Israel’s new death penalty law for Palestinians recycles a colonial playbook
The passing of the recent Israeli death penalty law legalizes an already existing policy of executions within a set schedule. The same colonial logic governs how Israel launches its wars: first Gaza, then Lebanon, now Iran. Resistance in this region is refusing Israel’s timetable of death.
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This evil vile thug needs to be locked up and tried for war crimes at The Hague. According to comments on various media platforms, this is the first time execution has been made legal for only one specific nationality – the Palestinkians – since Hitler`s Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, the fascist militia in the West Bank, armed by the state, murder and kill Palestinians at will, and the “Israeli” army and police get away with murder, rape and disposession. Absolutely unbelievable, and hardly a whisper about this “law” from “mainstream” media.