In a major shift, Shin Bet Chief David Zini has informed the government that the security agency supports a controversial bill to enact the death penalty for terrorists, according to Hebrew media reports on Friday.
Zini was said to have endorsed the legislation on the agency’s behalf at a security cabinet meeting on Thursday night.
According to an unnamed source cited by Channel 12, during the meeting, Zini was asked by Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem if he believed the death penalty would deter would-be terrorists, to which he replied that it would.
Pushed by Amsalem on whether it could backfire and lead to increased attempts to harm Israelis, including by kidnapping them, the Shin Bet chief was said to have pointed out that Israelis have already been kidnapped.
Zini was appointed to his role last month. His selection by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was controversial, with opponents citing Zini’s hard-right politics as a cause for concern.
Former heads of the Shin Bet security agency, Nadav Argaman, Karmi Gilon and Ami Ayalon, petitioned the High Court last month against his appointment, claiming he lacked relevant experience and that he was “messianic” in his religious and political beliefs.
The agency’s sudden backing of the death penalty signals a departure from the consensus of former Shin Bet heads, who largely opposed similar legislative actions in past years.
Haaretz cited unnamed security officials as claiming that the Shin Bet’s shift on the death penalty is not due to the new agency chief but rather due to a change in the security situation on the ground.
The death penalty bill, sponsored by MK Limor Son Har-Melech of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, passed its first reading last week. It is currently being debated in the Knesset’s National Security Committee, ahead of its second and third plenary readings.
Opponents of the bill have criticized, among other issues, that it is aimed only at Arabs who kill Jews and not at Jewish terrorists.
However, at Thursday’s cabinet meeting, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reportedly suggested that a Jew who works on behalf of Iran could be executed under the proposed legislation, according to leaked quotes.
His remarks came after a representative of the Israel Defense Forces told ministers that the military did not oppose the death penalty for terrorists, but is opposed to the proposal in the current version of the bill that would see it become a mandatory punishment, without exception, reports said.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has long championed the idea of the death penalty for terrorists, was said to have insisted, however, that “it must be a mandatory punishment,” as otherwise it won’t be applied frequently enough.
“First of all, because of the attorney general and prosecutors,” he said as a reason for his insistence on the matter. “Everyone knows they will never ask for the death penalty, and even if we instruct them, they will tell us that we are not allowed to interfere in sentencing policy. I don’t trust them,” he said, according to the report.
According to Channel 12, it is highly unlikely that a law enforcing a mandatory death penalty without a chance for appeal would be upheld in Israel’s courts.
The ministers were also reported to have discussed the potential to expand the bill to include Jews as eligible for the death penalty — but only if they harm other Jews or the State of Israel.
“Whoever acts against the existence of the Jewish people,” will receive the death penalty, Ben Gvir was reported to have told the meeting, to which Smotrich was said to concur that “a Jew who acts on behalf of Iran against the State of Israel can be executed.”
Dozens of Israeli citizens have been arrested and charged with espionage for the Islamic Republic over the past two years, as cases pile up in which Iranian agents have promised Israelis money in exchange for their services as spies. In the latest case, on Thursday, a Beersheba resident was indicted on suspicion of spying for Iran during his mandatory military service.
Although the death penalty formally exists in Israeli law, it has only ever been used once, in 1962, in the case of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust.
It is technically allowed in cases of high treason, as well as in certain circumstances under martial law that applies within the army and in the West Bank, but currently requires a unanimous decision from a panel of three judges, and has never been implemented.
In March 2023, lawmakers voted 55-9 in support of the bill in an initial reading, but it ultimately did not advance further despite having been part of the ruling Likud party’s coalition agreement with Otzma Yehudit, due to high-level opposition within the government and security services.
Then, after hundreds of hostages were abducted during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the Gaza war, officials feared that the passage of such a law would set back talks for the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian terror convicts.
Flouting legal advice and a warning from the premier’s point man on the hostages, lawmakers in the Knesset National Security Committee voted in September to advance the bill. Late last month, following the release of the last remaining living hostages as part of a ceasefire deal that halted the war, Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben Gvir gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an ultimatum: advance the law to its first reading in three weeks or Otzma Yehudit will stop voting with the coalition.
Netanyahu subsequently gave his backing to the bill, paving the way for a first reading last week, where it passed 39-16 in favor.
Source: timesofisrael.com, Staff, November 21, 2025
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde