Ben Gvir: Arab MKs oppose death penalty bill ‘because it will take many of their friends’

Following a stormy Knesset committee meeting on the quickly advancing death penalty bill, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attacks Arab lawmakers, accusing them of terror sympathies over their opposition to the legislation.

“Ahmad Tibi, [Ayman] Odeh, [Mansour] Abbas and Co. are scared to death that this will happen, because it will take many of their friends from this world,” he writes on X. “We, God willing, will make their nightmare come true.”

He pushes back against claims that the bill’s definition of terrorist applies only to someone who murders Jews because they are Jewish, saying the death penalty will apply to “anyone who murders a Jew, or non-Jew, as part of the struggle against the revival of the Jewish people in their land and the State of Israel.”

In its current form, the legislation effectively precludes perpetrators of Jewish nationalist violence from facing the death penalty.

The bill states that it will apply to anyone who intentionally or recklessly causes the death of an Israeli citizen, when the act is committed “with the purpose of harming the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their homeland.”