By any objective measure, we are entering a new phase of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Israel, despite its size, has shown itself to have one of the most effective military and security establishments in the world. In addition, it obviously has a significant influence on the global hegemon, the United States.

But the ability to project power and lethality is not a justification to actually do so. Especially when the prohibition against the bombardment of civilians has been ignored, yet again, with impunity.

It goes without saying that the events of October 7 must be denounced. Hamas is an evil institution that betrays its own people to further its own power and millenarian fantasies. Hezbollah attacks civilians and intimidates its own people in Lebanon. Iran has fomented terror and tyrannised its population for nearly half a century.

But after arguing for years that the casualty figures produced by the Gaza Ministry of Health were grossly exaggerated, Israel conceded in January that they are essentially accurate. More than 70,000 Gazans were killed, with more than half of those casualties being women and children. Whether the actual number was 70,000 or 75,000 (as The Lancet has calculated), the death toll is vast. More than 165,000 were injured.

Thus, nearly 10 per cent of the population of Gaza were casualties of the invasion. With these figures, it cannot be reasonably argued that Israel was simply targeting Hamas. It does not mitigate the horror of October 7, when more than 1,300 people were murdered, to note that indiscriminate and disproportionate massacre of civilians on a massive scale is a grievous war crime when committed by a state party. Neither remotely justifies the other as a matter of international law or common human morality.

As disturbing as this is, the horror is about to redouble. The Netanyahu regime has passed legislation imposing the death penalty on a mandatory basis on Palestinians who commit lethal attacks on Israelis. The death sentence must be carried out within 90 days, by hanging. Whatever one’s views on the death penalty or on Israel, there is something new and chilling about a law that imposes the death penalty only on members of one group and only for killing members of another group.

Israel has executed two people in its near-80-year history, one for treason (a court martial of an Israeli officer, which was posthumously found to have been erroneous) and against Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal who zealously coordinated the Holocaust death camps, for genocide.

Israel was, until recently, one of seven countries to have abolished the death penalty for “ordinary crimes”, including murder. But no more. Note that the converse does not hold. If a Jewish Israeli murders a Palestinian, no matter the circumstances, he cannot be executed.

The law imposes the death penalty on persons convicted of fatal terrorist attacks who reside in specifically defined locations defined in the statute as “The Area”. The Area is “Judea and Samaria”, the Israeli locution for the West Bank. In military courts, the death penalty is the “default”; only Palestinians are tried. The law does not require that the prosecution even ask for the death penalty.

The court must impose it if the accused terrorist is tried in a military court, where most such trials occur, although there is the possibility of a life sentence in the event of undefined “special circumstances”. In civilian courts, both Israelis and Palestinians can be tried for terrorist acts, but the law applies only to those who “intentionally cause the death of a person with the aim of denying the existence of the State of Israel” – a definition intended to exclude Jewish terrorists. If there were any ambiguity, the penalty does not apply to Israeli citizens or residents who live in “The Area”, effectively excluding all settlers. In the words of The Times of Israel, the law “effectively enshrines capital punishment for Palestinians alone”.

It is hard to know where to begin with the outrageousness as well as the stupidity of such blatantly hateful and xenophobic legislation. Will this deter Palestinian attacks? Hardly; it will create martyrs. Will this promote the image of Israel as a country governed by the semblance of the rule of law? Will it create support for Israel as a democratic island in an authoritarian desert? Will it create sympathy for Israel or for Jews more generally?

Right-wing extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir invoked the United States as a model, asserting that the bill was modelled on the “correct and just” US model for the death penalty. And, of course, the Trump administration quickly seconded that sentiment, with the state department issuing a statement that it “trust[ed]” there would be “fair trial[s]” and that Israel had a “sovereign right” to determine laws and penalties applying to terrorism.

Ben-Gvir is flatly wrong. The United States death penalty process, whatever its flaws, prohibits the automatic imposition of the death penalty and requires consideration of mitigating circumstances and consideration of proportionality. And no death sentence could ever be carried out in 90 days, allowing an appeals process that permits consideration of whether the death penalty was properly imposed.

More than 200 Americans have been sentenced to death and later exonerated since 1973 – one for every execution carried out. There is no possibility of correcting miscarriages of justice under the rush to the gallows that the Israeli law imposes. Nor would the United States allow a law that permitted the execution of members of only one religious or ethnic group and excluded death eligibility for the majority. We in the Jewish community have seen this before.

The law would be blatantly unconstitutional in the United States and contrary to the principles of general applicability and due process that characterise any civilised legal system. A fair question for the Netanyahu government: at long last, have you no shame?

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