In 2003, during the Second Intifada, Shalom Har-Melech and his wife Limor, expecting their second child, were attacked by Palestinian gunmen while in their car. Shalom was killed and his wife injured.

Today, Mrs. Har-Melech is remarried (her current surname is Son Har-Melech) and a member of the Knesset. She testified before the body about the fact that one of her first husband’s killers went on to be released in a prisoner exchange deal. And went on to command a deadly attack on another Israeli and to take part in the October 7 massacre before finally being killed during the Gaza war.

Her testimony was in regard to a bill before the Knesset that she is sponsoring, with the enthusiastic support of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The bill, which passed its first reading (of the required three readings) by a vote of 39 to 16 on November 10, would mandate a death sentence for anyone convicted of “intentionally or out of indifference causing the death of an Israeli citizen, when the act is carried out from a racist motive or hate to a certain public…and with the purpose of harming the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in its homeland.”

Needless to say, the proposal has outraged a bevy of human rights groups (who tend to downplay the human right to be safe from crazed killers), occupants of the political left and the Palestinian Authority.

Not to mention the Knesset National Security Committee, whose legal advisers determined that there are fundamental problems with the bill.

They object to the removal of judges’ sentencing discretion, since a murderer found guilty of the described crime would automatically be sentenced to death; and to the bill’s seeming de facto applicability only to Palestinian perpetrators and Israeli victims (although its wording makes no ethnicity-based distinctions).

The committee also insists that proof must be proffered for the contention that implementing the death penalty would deter terrorism.

What’s more, as currently written, the bill requires executions by lethal injection, involving doctors in the process. And the Israel Medical Association objected to medical personnel being involved in any execution.

Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954 (when the UK and France were still carrying out executions, as do some 27 US states and the federal government today). But capital punishment remains on the Israeli books for certain offenses, including crimes related to the Holocaust and to genocide or treason. Famously, Israel convicted and hanged Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

In 1967, military courts established in the captured territories were authorized to impose the death penalty on murderous residents. But every Israeli government since has maintained a policy of abstaining from its use, instructing military prosecutors not to seek death sentences.

And so, the elephant cowering in the corner here is already existent Israeli law. The creature needs to be coaxed forward, watered and fed.
While the Son Har-Melech proposal may have its heart in the right place, a new law, especially one that raises questions, legitimate or not, that will be used to prevent its implementation, isn’t what’s needed.

Especially since passage of the bill will only add to the hatred for Israel that has spread like some poisonous kudzu around the world. That is why Degel HaTorah’s rabbanim instructed the party’s MKs to vote against the proposal. Rav Dov Landau called the bill “provocation for its own sake” and asserted that it could “cause bloodshed.”

Instead of a new law, what is needed is governmental direction to judges to no longer refrain from prosecuting terrorists under existent law, and to start sentencing the murderous among them appropriately. Doctors needn’t be involved in carrying out those sentences. Gallows work fine.

Terrorists with blood (Jewish or otherwise) on their hands deserve execution. Not because of some lust for revenge or hatred. But because of the simple fact that removing such people from the world concurrently removes the incentive that terror groups have to kidnap Israelis, namely, to effect the release of imprisoned murderers.

As MK Son Har-Melech succinctly put it: “A dead terrorist does not get released alive.” He can no longer serve as a living bargaining chip.

Nor does he have opportunities to pick up where he left off.

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