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‘Unprecedented act of savagery’: How Israel’s new law places Palestinians on death row by default

By Zeynep Conkar | TRT World | May 19, 2026

Israel has become the first Western-aligned “democracy” to legislate a mandatory death penalty targeting a single ethnic group under military occupation, and this week, it put that law into force.

The order was signed on Sunday by Major General Avi Bluth, commander of the Israeli army’s Central Command, at the request of Defence Minister Israel Katz, the same minister who once ordered the immediate cut-off of water supply to Gaza and has publicly threatened Gaza’s civilians with “total devastation” in what South African prosecutors and international legal experts cited as evidence of genocidal intent before the International Court of Justice.

Under the new law, military courts prosecuting Palestinians whose attacks resulted in the death of an Israeli must apply the death penalty as the sole available sentence, unless the court finds special circumstances allowing for life imprisonment instead.

Once a final ruling is handed down, the sentence must be carried out within 90 days.

Within Israeli courts, military orders always take precedence over Israeli and international law,  according to Nasir Qadri, an international law practitioner and a critical legal scholar at Koc University.

“The system was never designed to adjudicate guilt; it was designed to administer a colonised population through the form of law, and a 96 percent conviction rate is its proof,” Qadri tells TRT World.

“The 90-day execution deadline and the prohibition on pardon or commutation remove formal residues from a structure already characterised by arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention, secret evidence that defendants cannot challenge, and confessions extracted under torture,” he adds.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose far-right Jewish Power party had long campaigned for the measure, hailed the signing as a political victory, declaring “we promised and we fulfilled.”

The law was passed by the Knesset on 30 March 2026, by a vote of 62 to 47, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu present in the chamber to support the bill.

Before the vote, it had already drawn wide condemnation, not only from Palestinian organisations and international human rights bodies, but from within Israel’s own legal establishment.

This is a discriminatory behaviour under international law, Qadri argues.

“This law converts the colonial administration of Palestinian life into the colonial administration of Palestinian death, and does so through the same legal instruments, military orders, security classifications, and jurisdictional exclusions,” says Qadri.

“The prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of life under Article 6 of the ICCPR, as interpreted by the Human Rights Committee in General Comment 36, requires in capital cases the strictest observance of fair trial guarantees.”

“The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination stated in May 2026 that the law is de facto applicable to Palestinians only, given that its threshold, intent to negate the existence of the state, structurally excludes Israeli Jewish defendants by definition,” says Qadri.

A dual discriminatory system

The legislation’s reach is defined by the dual legal system operating across the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians there live under military law, while Israeli settlers fall under civilian law, two parallel frameworks in the same territory.

The death penalty provision applies only through the military courts, which means it applies exclusively to Palestinians. In the civilian track, the law only covers those acting with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel, a definition designed to exclude Jewish defendants.

The law operates across two legal orders that share only a maximum penalty, according to Qadri.

“Palestinian defendants in the West Bank face military courts where judges are uniformed officers, confessions extracted under interrogation constitute primary evidence, and the conviction rate is 96 percent.”

“Israeli defendants face civilian courts with independent judges, full evidentiary standards, and a Supreme Court appellate structure. Placing the same capital sanction across both frameworks without equalising the procedural conditions that determine whether it is applied fairly is a structural guarantee of differential outcomes,” Qadri explains.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said the law rolls back Israel’s long-standing de facto moratorium on executions, in place since 1962, and noted with concern that it “prohibits mitigation, commutation or pardon of the death penalty” once a sentence is handed down.

UN experts have warned that the mandatory nature of the sentence violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel ratified in 1991, under which mandatory death sentences are prohibited as inherently arbitrary.

What it means for Palestinians behind bars

The law comes into force against a backdrop of severe and worsening conditions for Palestinians in Israeli arbitrary detention.

As of March 2026, approximately 9,500 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, with about half under administrative detention or labelled “unlawful combatants,” held without charge and unable to defend themselves in court.

Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups have described the new law as an “unprecedented act of savagery,” accusing Israel of codifying violence against detainees amid mounting reports of torture and deaths in custody since the genocide in Gaza intensified.

“Administrative detention is a colonial relic, the bitter fruit of Britain’s 1945 Emergency Regulations, exported and perfected across an archipelago of twenty-five detention centres, prisons, and interrogation facilities, twenty-one of them inside Israel itself,” Qadri says.

“What the death penalty law changes is not the material conditions of detention; the torture, the medical neglect, the enforced disappearance of hundreds of families still unable to determine whether their loved ones are alive, detained, or dead; but the existential conditions, so that every unanswered question about a detained relative now carries the weight of an execution deadline,” he adds.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, alongside Adalah and several other rights organisations, has petitioned the High Court against the law, arguing it is racially discriminatory, unconstitutional, and that the Knesset has no authority to legislate directly for the occupied West Bank.

The court has yet to issue a final ruling. In the meantime, the law is in force, and for Palestinians facing military prosecution, the death penalty is the default sentence the law prescribes.

“This is the precise function of what international law has failed to name, not merely to kill, but to make an exposed population live in permanent, calibrated proximity to death as a technique of control over the living,” Qadri says.

“The law is not addressed to the defendant; it is addressed to the population,” he adds.

May 21, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Comments Off on ‘Unprecedented act of savagery’: How Israel’s new law places Palestinians on death row by default

Naftali Bennett Is Running A Campaign To ‘Fix Israel’s Hasbara’

The Dissident | May 21, 2026

Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Israeli opposition challenging Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, shares the exact same genocidal, expansionist vision of greater Israel as Netanyahu, arguably in an even more extreme way.

Bennett, who has described himself as “more right-wing than Bibi”, has called to annex the majority of the West Bank, celebrated the genocide in Gaza, justified the IDF shooting Palestinian children, supports the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, and supports the war on Iran.

As the Times of Israel noted, Bennett and his coalition partner, Yair Lapid, “broadly accept Netanyahu’s security assumptions — hardline on Iran, hawkish on Gaza and Lebanon, opposed to Palestinian sovereignty under current conditions”.

One of the major ways Bennett is differentiating himself from Benjamin Netanyahu is by campaigning on improving Israel’s propaganda machine, effectively supporting the same Greater Israel policies of the Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, but doing a better job in hiding them from the world.

Israel recently suffered another PR crisis after its national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, released a video showing his forces abusing detained activists who were attempting to bring food aid to Gaza.

In repose, Naftali Bennett did not oppose the torture of international activists, but criticized the damage Ben-Gvir did to Israel’s propaganda machine by publishing the video of it, saying, “The Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Deri coalition has weakened Israel’s international standing to an unprecedented low, endangering IDF soldiers abroad and arming our antisemitic enemies around the world.”

He then announced one of the key planks of his campaign platform, “how we will fix Israel’s hasbara”.

Announcing his plan, Bennett laid out an organized attempt to run social media troll farms and to plant Israeli propagandists in media in order to silence criticism and factual reporting on Israel’s war crimes.

He said that he will “establish a powerful national hasbara authority:
The authority will set Israel’s messaging strategy, coordinate between bodies, and ensure that the Israeli response is swift, unified, and professional. It will have an independent budget, a professional director, and its own power”.

This “powerful national hasbara authority,” according to Bennett’s plan, “will recruit experts in international media, social networks, public opinion research, crisis management, creativity, data, and technology”.

Bennet called to create a pool of Israeli propagandists in the media to be activated to do damage control for Israel.

As part of his plan, he called to “create a pool of spokespeople in major languages who will appear in global media, podcasts, universities, and social networks.
We will initiate a presence—in every language, in every arena, at every hour.”

He also called to establish a social media troll farm to silence criticism of Israel, calling to “establish a consciousness and technology war room” which “will operate an advanced war room that will monitor the discourse in real time, identify disinformation before it takes hold, and distribute sharp, accurate, and fast content.”

He called to coordinate this campaign with existing Israeli troll farms, writing, “Today, there are many excellent private hasbara efforts operating out of a sense of mission around the world, but they operate alone. We will connect them to a coordinated campaign, one fist for Israel.”

Finally, he called to work with Western government backing Israel in this major propaganda operation, writing, “Israel is not alone. There are other democracies grappling with disinformation attacks and attempts at influence by foreign actors. We will work together with technological, legal, and media tools to fight the lie machines that poison young people around the world.”

Naftali Bennett will be at least as genocidal and expansionist as the Netanyahu coalition government, but he will do a better job at hiding Israel’s crimes from the world by running an even more sophisticated propaganda operation, as he has openly admitted.

May 21, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on Naftali Bennett Is Running A Campaign To ‘Fix Israel’s Hasbara’

Boxed into a Corner: Iran Has Outsmarted Trump Every Step of The Way

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | May 21, 2026

US President Donald Trump has boxed himself into a corner that his ego will not allow him to get out of. Instead of Tehran surrendering, it is Washington that has to accept defeat, or risk dragging this regional conflict into a much wider and bloody war. The bottom line– Iran is better at wars of attrition.

From the first moments of the US-Israeli attack in February 2024, up until the temporary cessation of hostilities came into effect, the Iranians were in the driver’s seat. Iran’s former leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, had remained in his publicly known office and was killed almost immediately, almost too easily, it should be noted.

Unlike at the beginning of the 12-Day War, last June, the Iranians didn’t take 15 hours to respond to the aggression against them. Instead, it took only a few hours until missiles were raining down across the Persian Gulf and on Israeli targets.

The message that has been sent to both the Israelis and the US appears to be one that they are incapable of comprehending: assassinations don’t win wars against the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance. Despite its overwhelming technical and military advantages, the US-Israeli alliance watched on as the Iranians absorbed hit after hit, maintaining the capability to continue firing every single day and inflicting significant retaliatory blows.

Around 16 US bases and hundreds of American military assets were crushed, while the military casualties numbered at least into the hundreds; that we know about. Iran, however, flipped the tables completely and decided to make what could be construed as a territorial gain– they now control the Strait of Hormuz.

The only answers the Trump administration has been able to come up with, in response to the Strait of Hormuz closure and Iran’s proven ability to continue fighting, are that he directs enormous strikes on civilian infrastructure or puts boots on the ground. Both these options will result in severe consequences, regionally and domestically, for the United States.

All of this could be solved if the US government were capable of making its own decisions, independent of Israel. However, we live in the real world, where President Trump openly says he isn’t thinking of his own citizens’ financial position, but instead about what Israel cares about (“Iran can’t have nuclear weapons”).

It is also apparent that Trump doesn’t actually care about Iran potentially building nuclear weapons, because if he did, the path to preventing this outcome is a deal that replicates the 2015 Nuclear Deal. The US’s problems with Iran have never been about nuclear weapons; they seek regime change in Tehran for two reasons: Iran is an independent nation, and Israel wants to see it fall.

Evidently, the Trump administration is in the back pocket of the US-based Israel Lobby and is incapable of saying no, which has gotten them into this current mess. A leader like Trump, whose shallow ego makes him incapable of admitting defeat, has been led into a disaster that he can’t get out of.

Instead of weakening the Islamic Republic, if the war were to end on the simple terms that Iran has set out – namely, a ceasefire on all fronts, a new system governing the Strait of Hormuz, and the lifting of sanctions, in addition to handing over frozen assets and compensation – then Tehran will be transformed into a major regional power. If it were militarily battered and had no leadership, as President Trump consistently claims, this would not even be on the table.

The Trump administration fell for the bait of attacking Iran and launching a decapitation strike; now it is being made to pay a price. The Iranians are not about to throw away their leverage for nothing; they want to use this opportunity to free their nation economically and to achieve victory across the region.

Then came the “Uno reverse card” strategy, Washington imposing a blockade on top of Iran’s blockade. If you were to believe the White House, the Iranians are already begging on their knees due to this strategy. If you instead trust your own perceptions, then the reality couldn’t be further from this fictional and egotistical depiction.

Iran can easily outlast its opponents when it comes to surviving an economic war, because it has suffered through this for 47 years. Which means that Trump is running out of time.

On the Lebanon front, Hezbollah is grinding down the Israeli ground forces who are currently attempting to impose an occupation in the south of the country. Washington’s solution has been to try to use the deeply unpopular Lebanese government in an attempt to stir civil unrest inside Lebanon, but also to drag it into a normalization agreement with Tel Aviv, one that will present the Israelis with a propaganda victory.

Hezbollah, both Washington and Tel Aviv told the world, was supposed to have been defeated in 2024. Instead, it is now using asymmetric warfare to batter the Israelis and impose a new equation that will eventually force a retreat that will represent an even more consequential retreat than occurred as a result of the 2000 liberation of South Lebanon.

So the Trump administration is running out of time, the economic pressure on his Persian Gulf Arab allies is immense and the Israelis are feeling the heat of Hezbollah’s blows. There are two ways forward: to escalate again militarily or to bow to Iranian demands. The military option is a non-option, because there is simply nothing more that can be achieved without enormous consequences. Yet, Donald J Trump, the weakest President in American history, appears incapable of saying no to Israel.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

May 21, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Boxed into a Corner: Iran Has Outsmarted Trump Every Step of The Way