Ben Gvir flaunts noose at Knesset hearing on execution bill for Palestinians

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir turned up to a Knesset National Security Committee session on Monday wearing a bright yellow pin shaped like a gallows noose, as lawmakers debated a proposed bill that would introduce the death penalty for Palestinians accused of resisting the Israeli occupation.

The gesture, designed to provoke, came as Ben Gvir and other members of his extremist Jewish Power party attended the hearing ahead of the bill’s second and third parliamentary readings, despite mounting legal and ethical objections to the proposal.

Ben Gvir publicly championed execution as an acceptable tool of state violence. “One of the options by which the law will enforce a death penalty for terrorists,” he said, according to Haaretz. “Of course, there is the option of the gallows, the electric chair, and there is also the option of anesthesia.”

A day earlier, the committee’s legal advisers warned that the bill raises serious constitutional problems, casting doubt on its legality and compatibility with even Israel’s own legal framework.

Ben Gvir dismissed those concerns, boasting about alleged support from within the medical community. “Since it was announced that doctors would not want to help with the law, I have received a hundred calls from doctors saying, ‘Itamar, just tell me when’,” the minister said.