Israeli minister has been wearing a noose pin to support new death penalty bill for Palestinians

ISRAEL’S NATIONAL SECURITY minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been criticised for wearing a golden noose-shaped pin on his lapel linked to his support of a bill that will allow the execution of Palestinians convicted on terror charges.

The far-right minister and his Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party spearheaded the bill, which was passed 62-48 in the Knesset on Monday.

Ben-Gvir, who himself has been convicted of supporting a terrorist organisation, waved a champagne bottle in the parliament chamber when it passed and later toasted with party members. 

Under the new law, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks classified as “terrorism” will face the death penalty as a default sentence.

Because Palestinians in the territory are automatically tried in Israeli military courts, the measure effectively creates a separate and harsher legal track.

Ben-Gvir and members of his party adopted the noose as a symbol of their support for the bill when it was first initiated in the Knesset in December. 

According to the Jerusalem Post, Ben-Gvir told the Knesset’s National Security Committee that month that he and his party members “all came with a pin, and it is one of the options through which we will implement the death penalty for terrorists”. 

He also said the pins sent “a clear message that terrorists are deserving of death”. 

The pins received criticism for resembling the yellow ribbon pin worn by the families of the Israeli hostages that were taken by Hamas during their 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. 

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Democrats party leader Yair Golan said hanging a noose on the lapel of a minister was “a statement of intent”. 

“When a government uses the symbolism of death to market “strength,” it is no longer fighting terrorism; it is beginning to train for dictatorship,” he wrote on X. 

Democratic Israeli MP Gilad Kariv called the pins “a revolting paraphrase of the hostage pins” and a “cynical and disgraceful campaign on the backs of bereaved families”. 

Leader of Israel’s Hadash Ta’al party Ayman Odeh also criticised the MPs for wearing the pins, saying they were promoting “a racist law imposing the death penalty exclusively on Palestinians”.

“The hangman’s noose is one of the most vile symbols of hatred against African Americans, historically embraced by white supremacists and the KKK, and it evokes emotions as visceral as the swastika does for Jews,” he wrote on X.

“This is the true face of the Israeli government: racist, fascist, supremacist. A regime that wears its hatred proudly and unapologetically.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has filed a petition to the country’s Supreme Court challenging the bill.

Before it passed, the human rights group called the pin a “mockery of those wearing yellow ribbon pins for the return of the hostages: a typical rejection of the hope for life and repair in favor of cruelty and death.”

Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, has also filed an urgent petition to the country’s Supreme Court calling for the bill to be declared null and void. 

It said the law “represents a complete negation of the right to life and imposes cruel and inhuman punishment” and “meets the definition of racist apartheid legislation”. 

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