Israel passes law setting up military tribunal which can sentence 7 October attackers to death

In the October 7 assault led by Hamas, terrorists killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages.

Hundreds of Hamas terrorists accused of committing war crimes during their October 2023 attack could face the death penalty after Israel late Monday approved the creation of a special military tribunal to prosecute their cases.

In a rare show of Israeli political unity, the legislation received broad backing from both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition and much of the opposition, passing with 93 votes in favor and zero against.

The Israeli parliament on Monday approved in its second and third readings a bill titled the “Prosecution law for the October 7 Massacre.” The legislation creates a dedicated tribunal, operating as a military court, to handle the prosecution of roughly 400 Hamas terrorists from the Nukhba Force who have been held in Israel since the attack, an Israeli official told CNN.

The law includes a legal framework that will allow the death penalty for those convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and murder under aggravated circumstances. According to the bill’s explanatory notes, its purpose is “to regulate the prosecution of those responsible for acts of hostility, murder, sexual violence, abduction, and looting carried out by Hamas and its affiliates as part of the coordinated and deliberate terrorist attack against Israeli civilians beginning on October 7, 2023.” The legislation also covers offenses committed afterward against hostages taken to the Gaza Strip.

The special tribunal will be based in Jerusalem. Its proceedings will be public and recorded via audio and video, and key hearings will be broadcast on a dedicated website. Judicial panels will be headed by sitting or retired district court judges. The bill also stipulates that funding for the defendants’ legal representation will be deducted from funds transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

Yulia Malinovsky, one of the bill’s sponsors and a lawmaker from the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, compared the tribunal to a “modern Eichmann trial.” A key architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann was convicted in a landmark trial in Israel and was executed in 1962 — one of only two people ever executed in Israel’s history.

Israel’s penal code already includes capital punishment for some of the charges the October 7 terrorists are likely to face, but the country has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1962. The new law provides the specific framework to enable its use in these cases. If handed down, a death sentence would trigger an automatic appeal on behalf of the defendant.

Because the bill empowers a panel of judges to hand down the death penalty by a majority vote — and requires the trials to be conducted in a livestreamed Jerusalem courtroom — it has drawn comparisons to Eichmann’s 1961–62 trial, which was broadcast live on television.

Simcha Rothman, one of the bill’s sponsors from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, said the overwhelming consensus for the bill shows Israeli lawmakers can come together “around a common mission.”

Several Israeli rights groups — including Hamoked, Adalah and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel — said that while “justice for the victims of October 7 is a legitimate and urgent imperative,” any accountability “must be pursued through a process which includes rather than abandons the principles of justice.”

This bill is separate from a different law passed in March 2026 that made the death penalty the default sentence for certain future terrorism-related murders in military courts. That earlier legislation is not retroactive and therefore does not apply to the October 7 attacks.

In the October 7 assault led by Hamas, the Palestinian group that controlled the Gaza Strip, terrorists killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages. The unprecedented 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorist group is the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Two men were executed in Israel since its founding in 1948.

Meir Tobianski, an IDF officer, was executed by firing squad on 30 June 1948 after a hasty wartime court-martial convicted him of treason for allegedly passing information to Jordanian forces; he was posthumously exonerated in 1949.

The second and final execution was that of Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust, who was hanged at Ramla Prison at midnight between May 31 and June 1, 1962, following his landmark trial in Jerusalem. Eichmann remains the only person executed in Israel after a full civilian judicial process.

Source: NPR, SkyNews, CNN, DPN, Staff, May 12, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

Florida executes Andrew Richard Lukehart

Jacksonville man who killed his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby in 1996 executed 30 years later A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter and throwing her body in a pond 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was scheduled to receive a 3-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

US | Army lays groundwork for death row executions if Trump gives approval

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Alabama Plans to Execute Jeffrey Lee Despite Jury Vote for Life

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

Can the state execute a man who already survived? | Opinion

A second execution would be an unimaginable nightmare for Tony Carruthers and a moral horror for the rest of us. Tony Carruthers is not supposed to be alive . On May 21, Tennessee set out to execute him. It failed. Carruthers survived. He is not the first person to survive an execution in the United States, and he won’t be the last. For Carruthers, the question is: Now what? Will the state seek to arrange a second execution?

Florida | 2-time Jacksonville baby abuser is set for execution

Thirty years ago while on probation for fracturing an infant’s skull, Andrew Lukehart inflicted at least five blows to the head of another baby, then concocted a story that she was abducted before eventually leading authorities to her body in a swamp area. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 2, the 53-year-old from Jacksonville is set to become Florida’s eighth man on death row to be executed in 2026. He will become the 36th under Gov. Ron DeSantis after a record 19 inmates were executed by the state in 2025, including another from Duval County: Michael Bell.

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog