Knesset passes bill to revoke benefits for those convicted of serious terror, treason offenses

In a final legislative blitz prior to end of the current Knesset winter session, lawmakers vote 38-1 to pass a law permanently revoking national insurance benefits from people convicted of a “serious terrorist offense,” murder or attempted murder for terrorist purposes, or who engaged in treason or serious espionage and were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“It’s over – terrorists will not see another shekel from the State of Israel,” says the bill’s sponsor, Likud MK Ofir Katz.

“Today we are correcting a huge absurdity. This law comes to put an end to one of the moral failures in the State of Israel. Terrorists receive money from us – from the State of Israel,” Katz declares.

“These people made a conscious decision to murder Jews. They harmed the State of Israel. When you are an enemy – you will not receive a budget from the country that you are trying to destroy. In what other country would you hear such a thing? This is outrageous, it is absurd, and today it ends.”

Upon the deaths of those subject to the law, their dependents would be ineligible for survivor benefits. However, exceptions for child benefits would be made for children receiving child allowances under certain circumstances.

Last November, the Knesset passed two other bills cutting national insurance benefits for terror convicts.

The first law cut child allowances paid to parents of minors imprisoned for security or stone-throwing offenses while the second revoked 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.”