Lawmakers advance bills cutting welfare benefits for convicted terrorists
Legislation would halt child allowances to parents of minors incarcerated for security offenses, cut off workplace injury compensation for non-resident terror convicts
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Lawmakers in the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee voted Tuesday to advance a pair of bills limiting government welfare benefits to those implicated in terrorist activity for their final readings in the Knesset plenum.
The first, sponsored by Likud MK Ariel Kallner, would revise the National Insurance Law to cut child allowances paid to parents of minors imprisoned for security or stone-throwing offenses while the second, sponsored by Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky, would revoke National Insurance Institute benefits paid to anyone living abroad who “has been convicted of an offense pronounced by the court to be an act of terrorism.”
Efforts have been made to cut benefits for convicted terrorists for years and Kallner’s bill comes as an effort to re-legislate the issue after a similar bill was struck down by the High Court of Justice in 2021.
In a 5-4 decision, Justices Esther Hayut, Hanan Melcer, Uzi Vogelman, Daphne Barak-Erez and Anat Baron ruled that “although deterrence from committing security offenses is important, including stone throwing, the law disproportionately violates equal rights.”
“Using the criterion of a criminal conviction in relation to social benefits amounts to a violation of equal rights since it involves ‘labeling,’” wrote Baron in the ruling.
Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, there has been a national consensus that “when children are in prison for terrorist offenses, sleeping and eating at the expense of the Israeli taxpayer, the State of Israel should not also pay allowances to their parents,” Kallner asserted on Tuesday.
But while his new version of the legislation sought to address some of the court’s concerns, Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik argued that it still did not meet the bar set by the court, adding that a different version of the bill could still pass legal muster.
Malinovsky’s bill, meanwhile, calls for the cessation of payments under the National Insurance Law, such as work injury allowances to eligible non-residents of Israel who had previously worked in the country and were subsequently “convicted of an offense pronounced by the court to be an act of terrorism.”
According to the explanatory notes for the bill, which passed its first reading 23-7 this July: “In the course of the Swords of Iron war [in Gaza], it became apparent that there are also benefits paid to residents of the Gaza Strip who were involved in terrorist activity.”
Addressing the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee on Tuesday, Malinovsky stated that there are currently more than 30 people detained in Israel who meet this definition.
“The circus is over, the benefits for terrorists are being stopped,” she said after the committee vote. “Thanks to the law, we will put an end to the absurd situation in which state benefits [paid for] from Israeli taxpayer money go to terrorists who have blood on their hands and have harmed innocent citizens.”
Kallner and Malinovsky’s bills are only two of several legislative initiatives aimed at preventing or punishing terrorism that have made progress in the Knesset in recent days.
Last Tuesday, members of the Knesset House Committee voted 9-2 to advance a bill that would allow the government to deport the family members of terrorists.
The controversial legislation, which expressly applies to Israeli citizens, gives the interior minister the power to expel a first-degree relative of someone who carried out an attack if he or she had advance knowledge and either failed to report the matter to the police, or “expressed support or identification with an act of terrorism or published words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism or a terrorist organization.”
Both the Justice Ministry and the Attorney General’s Office have raised concerns about the legislation.
And earlier today, lawmakers gave final approval to a law authorizing the Education Ministry to fire teachers deemed to be publicly identifying with an act of terrorism, drawing immediate condemnation from human rights advocates.
The new law grants the director-general of the Education Ministry the authority to fire, without prior notice, teachers who have either been convicted of a security or terror offense, or have “published a direct call to carry out an act of terrorism or published words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism [or] support for or identification with it.”
“The purpose of the law is to threaten teachers and principals of Arab schools, to mark them and make them a target for surveillance and persecution,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel stated following the bill’s passage — arguing that the tools already at its disposal before the current law were “adequate and sufficient.”
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
