Western governments must impose severe sanctions immediately!
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!