Rabbi Lando Orders His Party to Vote Down the Death Penalty Bill

Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah faction within the Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, instructed his lawmakers to vote against a government-backed bill imposing the death penalty on terrorists who kill Israelis. The instruction, reported on 10 November 2025, put him in open conflict with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is pushing the legislation with the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ben-Gvir warned that his Otzma Yehudit party would stop voting with the coalition if the bill did not pass its first reading that week. A spokesman for Lando said the rabbi believes the policy "would endanger Jewish lives, because if Arabs around the world see that we are doing such a thing, it could lead to bloodshed." Despite Degel HaTorah's opposition, the measure could still advance with support from some opposition members.

What the bill would do

The bill's explanatory notes provide that terrorists convicted of murder motivated by racism or hostility toward the public, and committed with the aim of harming the State of Israel, would receive a mandatory death sentence. The law would allow a death sentence to be imposed by majority vote rather than unanimously, and would remove any possibility of mitigation once a sentence is final. The Knesset's National Security Committee had recently approved advancing the bill.

Reporting on the vote, the Times of Israel said three versions of the measure passed their first reading, the leading one by 39 votes to 16, with most of the opposition boycotting the vote. The paper noted that Netanyahu had opposed such legislation in 2023 over concerns about hostage negotiations and reversed his position after Ben-Gvir's ultimatum in October 2025.

The hostage question, and a changed mind

Brigadier General (res.) Gal Hirsch, the government's coordinator for hostages and missing persons, had previously opposed the legislation. He told the committee that his position had shifted after all the hostages returned from Gaza, a reminder that the strongest practical argument against the bill had been the fear of what it would mean for Israelis held captive.

Israel has almost never executed anyone

Israel has carried out a single civil execution in its history, that of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who organised the deportation of Europe's Jews. He was hanged in 1962 after being convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, and his ashes were scattered at sea. An Israeli court sentenced John Demjanjuk to death in 1988 for crimes against humanity committed at concentration camps, but the Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 1993; Israel extradited him, and he was later convicted in Germany as an accessory to the murder of more than 28,000 Jews at Sobibor, dying while appealing.

Israel abolished capital punishment for ordinary murder in 1954, keeping it for war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, treason and certain wartime military offences, according to a reference survey of the subject, which also records one earlier execution, of the army officer Meir Tobianski in 1948, who was posthumously exonerated. No prosecutor has sought a death sentence since the 1990s.

Why the Orthodox parties hold the balance

United Torah Judaism and the Sephardi Orthodox party Shas were already partially boycotting coalition votes to press Netanyahu into passing legislation granting broad military draft exemptions to yeshiva students. That dispute, not this bill, is the fault line that has repeatedly threatened the government's ability to legislate at all.

What happened afterwards

The bill did not die with the rift. A reference record of the legislation states that after committee approval in March 2026 the Knesset passed it by 62 votes to 48 on 30 March 2026 and it took effect on 17 May 2026, when the head of Israeli Central Command signed the implementing order. It prescribes execution by hanging, sets that as the default sentence in military courts, where only Palestinians are tried, and applies more narrowly in civilian ones; petitions against it were filed at Israel's Supreme Court by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah.

What is still unclear

The report did not say how many Degel HaTorah lawmakers were bound by the instruction, or whether UTJ's other faction shared the position. It did not say which opposition members were expected to supply the missing votes, and it gave no response from Netanyahu's office to Ben-Gvir's threat to withhold coalition support.