Ben-Gvir has repeatedly pushed for legislation permitting the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and has tightened prison conditions for detainees, including restricting visits, reducing food allowances a

Far-right Israeli politicians, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to a Knesset committee hearing on Monday on the proposed death penalty for Palestinian detainees.

Ben-Gvir said that the noose is “one of the options by which the law will enforce a death penalty for terrorists,” according to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, adding “of course, there is the option of the gallows, the electric chair, and there is also the option of lethal injection.”

“Death penalty is a very big step for Israel”

Far-right Israeli extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared wearing a noose-shaped pin while publicly demanding the death penalty for Palestinian detainees, even as he has recently pushed to pardon Israeli soldiers who executed two… pic.twitter.com/Lhro2ts1Sh

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 8, 2025

The gesture reportedly drew widespread criticism as Ben-Gvir and members of his Otzma Yehudit party, who also wore the pin, arrived for the committee hearing.

Criticism

During the session, Ben-Gvir commented on the stance of the Israeli Medical Association that it would be unethical for doctors to participate in the execution of prisoners, Haaretz said.

The far-right minister reportedly claimed that since the announcement, “I have received a hundred calls from doctors saying, ‘Itamar, just tell me when.’”

The proposed legislation, meanwhile, faces rising criticism from within Israel as well as internationally, such as from Amnesty International.

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Opposition leader Yair Lapid later criticized those wearing the lapel pins.

“Pictures of the pins with a noose are spreading throughout the world and causing indescribable damage,” he said, according to the Times of Israel

At the same time, the Democrats party chief Yair Golan, also expressed concern.

“A noose on a minister’s lapel is not a policy statement — it’s a declaration of intent,” he reportedly said on on X. “When a government uses the imagery of death to project strength, it is no longer fighting terrorism; it’s rehearsing dictatorship.”

Haaretz reported that on Sunday, the legal advisers of the Knesset’s National Security Committee indicated that “constitutional difficulties arise from the implementation of the bill,” including “its application only to Palestinians under military government” in the occupied West Bank.

Weaponization

Following the passing of the first reading of the legislation, Amnesty International last month urged its immediate halt.

“There is no sugarcoating this; a majority of 39 Israeli Knesset members approved in a first reading a bill that effectively mandates courts to impose the death penalty exclusively against Palestinians,” Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, said in a statement.

Rosas added, “While the text of the bill does not specifically single out Palestinians, the mental element required for the offence concerned signals its primary victims are going to be Palestinians and would include those who committed the punishable offences before the law is passed.”

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She emphasized that Knesset members “should be working to abolish the death penalty, not broadening its application.

Rosas added, “It should not be imposed in any circumstances, let alone weaponized as a blatantly discriminatory tool of state-sanctioned killing, domination and oppression.”

Ben-Gvir has repeatedly pushed for legislation permitting the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and has tightened prison conditions for detainees, including restricting visits, reducing food allowances and limiting shower access, according to Palestinian prisoner organizations.

(PC, Anadolu)