There is a concept in Jewish tradition called pikuach nefesh — the sanctity of human life, so supreme that it overrides nearly every other commandment. It is, in many ways, the ethical spine of Jewish civilization — and the foundation upon which Israel has always claimed its moral legitimacy. The Knesset just made that foundation significantly harder to stand on.

This is a dark day — not just for Palestinian rights. For Israel itself.

Capital punishment is irreversible. States that kill cannot unkill. And for a people whose own history is scarred by the ultimate expression of state-sanctioned death, the embrace of execution as policy should provoke something deeper than political debate. It should provoke shame.

Then there is the optics — and they are catastrophic.

Israel is living through arguably the most severe collapse of its international standing in its history. A war in Gaza that has left tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians dead. Wars with Lebanon and Iran. ICC warrants. ICJ proceedings. Entire generations of diaspora Jews drifting away. Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement urging Israel to abandon the legislation before the vote. Israel ignored them. As if Israel needed something else to hurt its international standing.

And in this context, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir physically carried a champagne bottle onto the floor of the Knesset to celebrate. He wore a golden noose-shaped lapel pin throughout the proceedings. When the vote passed, the chamber erupted in cheers.

Whatever one believes about security or deterrence — there is something morally illiterate about celebrating a law that ends human lives. It does not project strength. It projects bloodlust. I don’t know how you defend that image to a Senate staffer in Washington, to a Jewish student on an American campus, or to a European ally who was already skeptical. This is not a minor PR stumble. It is an accelerant poured on a raging fire.

Then there is Benjamin Netanyahu — a prime minister who initially opposed this bill, citing concerns about retaliation against hostages still in Gaza. A reasonable position. Then the ceasefire came, and Netanyahu walked into the Knesset and voted for it anyway, discarding his own stated principles the moment Ben Gvir threatened to pull the coalition. A man who understood why this law was dangerous handed Ben Gvir his greatest legislative trophy because he needed to keep his seat.

There is a deeper point here that too few are making. Israel has always drawn its moral legitimacy, in part, from the argument that we are not like our enemies. That when they target civilians, we investigate. That when they execute, we prosecute. That the IDF has a code of ethics, that our courts are independent, that the rule of law means something here. You can agree or disagree with how consistently Israel has lived up to that standard — but the standard itself has always been the point. It is what separates a democracy from the forces trying to destroy it.

Ben Gvir, on the Knesset floor with his champagne and his noose pin, was not projecting that standard. He was gleefully abandoning it. A state that responds to barbarism by reaching for execution is not demonstrating strength over its enemies. It is letting its enemies define what it becomes.

And this is where the story gets darker still.

The law will, in practice, apply to Palestinians. The bill mandates the death penalty as the default punishment for West Bank residents convicted of deadly terrorist acts in military courts. For Israeli citizens, a parallel provision applies only to those who kill with the intent of “negating the existence of the State of Israel” — a definition deliberately engineered to exclude Jewish nationalist violence.

One law. One people subject to its ultimate sanction. Another, not.

The bitter irony is impossible to ignore. The man who championed this execution law — who brought the champagne, who wore the noose pin — is Itamar Ben Gvir, who was himself convicted of incitement to racism and support for Kach, a designated terrorist organization. A man with a terrorism conviction on his record is now the architect of a death penalty law that will apply almost exclusively to Palestinians. If you were writing a parable about moral bankruptcy, you could not construct a more perfect one.

This law hands Israel’s critics an argument that is very hard to refute. A death penalty that falls almost exclusively on one ethnic group is not justice. It is the legal formalization of two-tiered humanity.

Israel prosecuted Adolf Eichmann — gave him a full trial — and executed him in the only instance of a death sentence carried out in the country’s history. That was exceptional. Singular. To now normalize execution as a tool of counterterrorism policy is to cheapen the gravity of that moment and erode the democratic distinction Israel has always claimed separates it from its adversaries.

A state that sanctifies life above all else does not send its national security minister to the parliament floor with a champagne bottle and a noose pin.

That is not strength. That is not justice.

That is a country losing itself — and Netanyahu continues to trade its soul for a coalition.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)