Global Experts and Activists Join Forces to Denounce Israel’s Execution Law as a Move Towards
State-Sponsored Judicial Terror

LONDON – Legal experts, political leaders, and activists have issued a harrowing indictment of Israel’s
newly ratified ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ law, characterising it as a ‘lethal instrument of colonial
desperation’. In a webinar co-organised by the Global Alliance for Palestine (GAFP) and the
Association of Student Activism for Palestine (ASAP), speakers warned that the legislation – passed by
the Knesset on 30 March – represents the formal ‘codification of state-sponsored execution’ designed
to crush Palestinian resistance through judicial terror.

The session, convened by Lujane Hamzeh of the GAFP, underscored a grim turning point in the
occupation’s legal architecture. The law mandates death by hanging for those convicted of acts
resulting in the death of an Israeli citizen. It has been specifically engineered with a 90-day execution
deadline, a move intended to bypass the possibility of international legal stays or diplomatic
intervention.

Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a physician, founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, and member of the
GAFP steering committee, opened the testimony with a searing analysis of the political climate in
which this law was birthed. He described the scenes within the Knesset – where proponents
reportedly celebrated with champagne and wore noose-shaped lapel pins – as a manifestation of a
fascist consensus.

Dr Barghouti stated that the death penalty law is meant to provide cover to the facts that Israel has
already conducted field executions against Palestinian hostages. He argued that the legislation is a
strategic attempt to legitimise the savage escalation of state violence, issuing a direct challenge to
the international community. He described the failure of European governments to implement
sanctions as a serious crime and insisted that there must be a complete boycott of the Israeli
Knesset.

Following Dr Barghouti’s contribution, the visceral reality of the prison system was bridged by human
rights lawyer Khaled Mahajne, the first legal professional to enter the notorious Sde Teiman facility.
His testimony, delivered in Arabic and translated for the webinar, stripped away the veneer of
‘judicial process’ surrounding the new law, revealing a system defined by systematic brutality.

‘From that day onwards, there have been so many violations, violations that are so difficult for me to
even quantify,’ Mahajne testified. He detailed the horrific conditions facing detainees, providing a
direct link to the systemic use of torture. ‘We are talking about more than 100 martyrs who have
already passed away within these prisons under horrific torture,’ he stated. He explained that the 90
day deadline acts not as a measure of efficiency, but as a technical anatomy of murder designed to
silence victims before their testimony can reach the world.

Mahajne’s account focused heavily on the physical and psychological destruction of prisoners. ‘The
scenes of horror that I have personally seen at the Sde Teiman facility… are so bad that I cannot even
describe in words or in detail how bad they were,’ he told attendees. ‘This war on the prisoners has
to stop. There should be an international stance against these Israeli laws.’

The psychological dimension of this legislative shift was articulated by Arab Barghouti, lead for the
campaign to release his father, Marwan Barghouti. He argued that the law’s primary function is not
justice but the intended collapse of the Palestinian social fabric through calculated cruelty. He
described the statute as a law designed to haunt the living as much as it kills the accused. He further
characterised the law as a form of collective punishment, meant to terrorise the families of prisoners
and signal that no level of international prestige or legal standing can protect a Palestinian from the
state’s ultimate sanction.

The final testimony came from Zahra Farooque, a liberated UK political prisoner and student
organiser with ASAP, who connected the global architecture of repression to the specific horrors
described by Mahajne. Drawing on her experience of being held for 15 months without charge after
taking action against Elbit Systems, Farooque called for a transition from passive awareness to active
obstruction.

She argued that the only effective response to the machinery of state execution is the total
mobilisation of the student movement and the intensification of political pressure on those who
provide the material support for the occupation. Farooque stated that we are not just witnessing a
legal change, but the construction of a network of torture camps, and insisted that the resistance
must be as organised and as relentless as the system it seeks to dismantle.
Lujane Hamzeh concluded the proceedings by noting that the findings of the session would serve as
a blueprint for immediate international accountability. ‘Last month, we mapped the machinery of
propaganda. Tonight, we’re confronting the machinery of state execution,’ Hamzeh stated. ‘There is
so much more work to do… the urgency cannot be overstated. This is the moment where silence
becomes a death sentence.’

Media Officer Contact Information
Media Officer: Raghad Osama
Email: media@palestine-alliance.org
Website: https://palestine-alliance.org/