Lawmakers on Sunday feted the expected passage of a bipartisan bill establishing a special military tribunal for trying Palestinian terrorists accused of committing atrocities during the October 7, 2023, invasion, saying it would allow for a trial of historic significance, likening it to the “Eichmann trial.”
Speaking at a joint press conference, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Knesset Constitution Law and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman, and Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky addressed reporters before the bill’s final two Knesset readings needed to become law, which are scheduled to take place Monday evening.
Levin asserted that the legislation “ensures not only that justice is served, but also that the historical record of the horrific massacre — of the victims, the hostages, and those responsible — will endure for generations.”
“Together, we have succeeded in forging a very broad consensus in the Knesset, crossing coalition and opposition lines, so that this historic legal proceeding will take place on an agreed-upon basis and earn the trust of the entire nation,” he added.
Security forces captured approximately 300 of the invaders inside Israel following the attacks, and have held them in various detention centers since, with Israeli law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies deliberating over the last two and a half years on how best to put them on trial.
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Answering a reporter’s question, Levin argued that the bill will “ensure proceedings meet all standards so they gain international recognition and trust, especially in the United States,” while also making sure that trials are “managed efficiently so they finish within reasonable timeframes, despite being a massive event involving hundreds of defendants.”
Hamas terrorists are seen in the Home Front Command’s Southern District base near Urim, on October 7, 2023. (Screenshot: Channel 12 news)
Under the legislation, the tribunal will be able to charge the assailants with all relevant crimes, including genocide under the terms of Israel’s 1950 Law for the Prevention of Genocide, harming Israeli sovereignty, causing war, assisting an enemy during a time of war, and terror charges under Israel’s 2016 law for combating terrorism.
Those convicted of genocide charges would be liable for the death penalty.
Citing the biblical verse “I will pursue my enemies and destroy them, and I will not return until they are consumed,” Rothman of the far-right Religious Zionism party described the bill during the press conference as “a clear message to Israel’s enemies.”
Malinovsky, a member of Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party in the opposition, asserted that the tribunals enabled by the legislation will constitute a “modern Eichmann trial,” referring to the trial of notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann in 1961, and added that “this law enjoys the broadest consensus seen here in years.”
Eichmann, seen as one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina and brought to Israel, where he was tried and eventually executed. The trial was widely seen as having helped Israelis come to terms with the horrors of the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
It remains one of only two times that Israel has carried out the death penalty.
Asked why the bill is necessary given that the coalition recently passed a death penalty for terrorists law, Malinovsky replied that “from the start, it was clear that the October 7 event is a separate case.” She added that, because laws cannot be applied retroactively, her legislation had been, of necessity, based “on legislation and offenses that already existed in the statute book on October 7.”
Destruction caused by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in Kibbutz Kissufim, on November 20, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
According to the bill, each case would be heard by a panel of three judges, in which the chief presiding judge would be a retired district court judge sitting alongside two other judges who are qualified to serve as district court judges and have expertise in criminal law.
Appeals could be made within the tribunal system to an appeals bench, which would consist of a chief presiding judge who is either a retired Supreme Court judge, a retired district court president, or the president of a military appeals court.
Alongside that judge would sit two retired district court judges.
A key aspect of the trials will be that they are public and will be broadcast on a website set up for this purpose.
The legislation also stipulates that anyone who is suspected, charged, or convicted of October 7 crimes cannot be released through prisoner release agreements.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 Palestinian terrorists, mostly from Hamas, but including other terror groups, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, at multiple points on the Israel-Gaza border, and carried out a series of massacres in which some 1,200 people were killed, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
These assailants also abducted 251 people as hostages and took them captive to the Gaza Strip, while also committing a wave of other atrocities, including rape and torture, and documenting the savagery on bodycams the terrorists wore during the attack.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
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