The jihadist terrorists who carried out the October 7 massacre are still alive. They sit in Israeli prisons, under Israeli protection, sustained by the state they invaded in order to slaughter civilians. Israel is now debating whether those convicted of terror murder should be executed. A bill advancing in the Knesset would permit, and in some cases mandate, the death penalty.
Predictably, many left-wing leaders oppose the bill, insisting that executions will not deter jihadists and will harm Israel’s legal standing abroad. When National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wore a gold noose pin during a committee session, they threw a fit. But his supporters understood it as something else entirely: a rejection of the fiction that ordinary criminal law is sufficient for enemies whose goal is the annihilation of the Jewish people.
The stakes of this debate are moral and existential. What does a society owe its dead, and what does it owe the living?
Israel has confronted this question before. Adolf Eichmann was a senior SS officer and a central Nazi administrator of the Holocaust. He organized deportations from across Europe, coordinated transports to extermination camps, and carried out genocide with discipline and initiative. After the Mossad secretly captured him in Argentina in 1960, Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem under Israel’s Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law. The 1961 trial rejected his claim that he was merely following orders and exposed the mechanics of the Final Solution to the world. In the end, he was convicted of crimes against humanity and the Jewish people and sentenced to death. His execution in 1962 remains the only instance in which Israel has carried out capital punishment.
Even then, incredibly, opposition arose. Prominent left-wing intellectuals, including Martin Buber, Leah Goldberg, Prof. Nathan Rotenstreich, and Prof. Samuel Hugo Bergman, argued against execution. Bergman argued that fifteen years had passed since the Holocaust, and that Eichmann no longer posed any ongoing threat. Justice, they claimed, could be satisfied without taking his life.
But this position mistakes mercy for morality.
The Bible rejects the idea that justice is merely instrumental. Murder is not erased by time, nor does its moral weight diminish when the murderer grows old.
Unpunished murder corrodes a society from within.
There is no expiration date on justice.
Amalek is not a tribe frozen in history. In the Bible, Amalek represents a mode of warfare that targets civilians, preys on weakness, and seeks annihilation rather than victory. Evil of this kind has no statute of limitations because its moral offense never expires.
The Bible insists that every human being is created in the image of God, tzelem Elokim. This is not a sentimental claim. Precisely because human life is sacred, there are actions that desecrate that image so completely that the right to live is forfeited.
The jihadist terrorists who murdered, raped, burned, and tortured civilians on October 7 acted with the same genocidal intent as Eichmann. They deliberately slaughtered babies, elderly people, women, and children. These acts were not spontaneous excesses. They were planned, filmed, and celebrated – just as the Nazis planned their crimes against the Jews of Europe.
At the opening of Eichmann’s trial, prosecutor Gideon Hausner declared: “I do not stand alone. With me stand six million accusers. Their blood cries out, but their voices cannot be heard. I will be their mouth.” In the trials of the jihadist terrorists of October 7, Israeli prosecutors also do not stand alone. With them stand 1,200 murdered men, women, and children who cannot speak because they were slaughtered for being Jews. With them stand the fallen soldiers who died stopping the massacre, the wounded who will never recover fully, and the hostages murdered or permanently scarred in captivity.
Executing Eichmann was just. Executing the terrorists who carried out October 7 is just as well.
With today’s terrorists, justice is not the only issue. Keeping them alive creates immediate danger. Israel has a long record of releasing convicted terrorists in hostage and prisoner exchanges, and many return directly to murder. Yahya Sinwar is the most damning example. He was serving multiple life sentences for terrorist murders when Israel released him in the 2011 Shalit deal. Upon his release, he rose to lead Hamas in Gaza and became the architect of the October 7 massacre. Terrorists kidnap Israeli civilians and soldiers precisely because they know that living terrorists are valuable bargaining assets. Their leaders say this openly.
Eichmann was never a bargaining chip. He could not be traded in an exchange, rescued by comrades, or returned to the battlefield. He was a defeated enemy from a destroyed regime. Even so, Israel concluded that justice demanded his execution. That decision leaves no room for doubt when dealing with terrorists who remain part of an ongoing war and who openly intend to murder again the moment they are able.
When King Agag of Amalek saw the prophet Samuel approach, he said, “Surely the bitterness of death has passed” (I Samuel 15:32). Gersonides explains that Agag assumed Samuel’s righteous and gentle demeanor meant he would be treated with mercy. He was wrong. Samuel executed him, hewing him into pieces.
When Eichmann requested clemency, President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi rejected it and wrote on the form the same verse that Samuel spoke to Agag: “As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.”
Both Samuel and Ben-Zvi understood that pity for the cruel becomes cruelty toward the innocent. Today, that principle has been abandoned. Israel’s legal culture prioritizes the preservation of terrorist lives over the safety of civilians. The result is both predictable and tragic: the slaughter of more innocent Jews.
Why should mass murderers be spared? Why should victims’ families be forced to watch the killers live comfortably while awaiting release? Unlike Eichmann’s case, the danger here is immediate. Delays, procedural formalism, and attachment to ordinary criminal law are moral failures in wartime. Terrorists should be tried under the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law, which allows deviation from standard evidentiary rules. Emergency regulations should be enacted to eliminate this evil decisively. Israel must be the voice of the murdered and of those who will be murdered if it hesitates.
The journalist Tamir Morag wrote:
“Now that Hamas no longer holds live hostages, the Nukhba members who took part in the massacre should be eliminated to the last one—but not in secret. It should be done openly, in full public view, with as much international exposure as possible.
In the fields of Nahal Oz, facing the massive mound of rubble that used to be the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, hundreds of gallows should be erected. The destruction of Gaza should be the last sight the Nukhba members see, as they are all executed there in a single, concentrated event.
The gallows being prepared and the sight of their bodies hanging should be broadcast around the world. One could skip showing the actual moment of execution—but honestly, there’s no real need to.
The world will condemn it. Israeli media commentators will be horrified and write about ‘moral collapse’ and ‘irreparable reputational damage.’ At home, people will say ‘we’ve become animals like them.’ All of that is meaningless noise from ignorant people who have been wrong their entire lives.
Yes, there will be reputational damage. Yes, the world will be shocked. And yes—those who already hate us will hate us a bit more. But the message will be delivered and burned into living flesh: anyone who massacres Jews ends up hanging in front of the ruins of his abandoned city—everyone, without exception. That message isn’t just historical justice; it is Israel’s clear, vital interest.
And only then—only then—could the war be declared over.”
May the day of justice come soon.
