With a pin of a noose hanging by their lapels, ministers in Israel this week celebrated a new death penalty law that explicitly targets Palestinians.
Ofer Cassif is one of the most prominent politicians who spoke out against it. His continued opposition to the government's anti-Palestinian policies has left him marginalised and, on one occasion, resulted in him being forcibly removed from the Knesset.
But he is undeterred. In a video that went viral online following the vote, Mr Cassif called it a “genocide law”. It is a label, he told The National, that is more than just a slogan.
“The law itself says that only Palestinian so-called terrorists can be tried and executed, and does not apply to Jewish terrorists,” he explained in an interview.
In the West Bank, at the moment, the law refers to residents of the occupied territory, excluding Israeli citizens. But Mr Cassif says it’s important to understand the law within a broader context.
“Those who proposed the bill and voted for it have systematically said for years that there’s no such thing as Jewish terrorism, which implies, by definition, that there’s no such thing as a Jewish terrorist.”
Mr Cassif also extrapolated on previous claims made over the past two years by Israeli politicians since October 7, 2023 on there being “no innocent people in Gaza”. A poll by the Accord Centre in 2025 found that 62 per cent of Israelis share this belief.
Days ago, the Chair of the Internal Affairs Committee in the Knesset expanded that notion to include Jenin, after Israeli soldiers shot and killed a couple with their two children.
“There are no innocent civilians. In Jenin, there are no innocent children,” Yitzhak Kroizer claimed.
By that logic, Mr Cassif said: Palestinians are being seen as terrorists, and are now allowed to be executed. “That’s genocide, and the logical way to understand the law.”
Israel holds 9,500 Palestinians in “administrative detention” – that is, without charge. They are now all at risk of the death penalty if a court finds them guilty of killing an Israeli.
The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation have condemned the law, calling it a “dangerous and unprecedented step that grants a licence for murder and political execution” of Palestinians. Arab states have also criticised the decision, referring to Israel's “system of apartheid” in a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Mr Cassif was not surprised that the new law was passed. Israel's ruling elite and even the opposition are becoming more hardline and resistant to local and international pressure.
“In the past four years, when this fascist government was formed … anytime we felt we reached the bottom of the abyss, someone knocked from beneath. I'm furious, I'm enraged, but not surprised.”
But all hope is not lost. In fact, Mr Cassif, who is an outspoken critic of Israel’s judicial system, said that there might be reprieve in the Supreme Court despite his many misgivings about it.
His political faction, Hadash, and the Adalah Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights, filed a claim with the Supreme Court to revise the bill as soon as it was passed into law.
“I’m very critical of the Supreme Court because, like all judicial systems in Israel, it is part of the establishment that enabled for many years the war crimes; crimes against humanity; the occupation and the genocide in Gaza,” Mr Cassif said.
In Gaza, the Israeli army has killed more than 72,000 people since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023.
Other legal experts and rights groups in Palestine and Israel have highlighted language used in the new law. The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy pointed out one clause states that acts committed with the aim of “negating the existence of the State of Israel” would be met with the death penalty.
“This ideological intent threshold is unprecedented in Israeli criminal law”, the PIPD said in a report. Under the new law, people like Jewish Israeli Amiram Ben Uliel, who killed an 18-month-old boy and his parents in 2015, would be exempt from capital punishment despite being found guilty of murder.
But Mr Cassif believes that the law is so outrageous that even the most hardline judges will have issues with it.
“This law is so unique in its unconstitutional character, I find it difficult to imagine a situation in which the most fascist judges are not revoking at least some of the elements or sections of this law if not the law as a whole.”
