It’s a sad day at the Public Committee Against Torture (PCATI). And I’ve never been prouder.
Last night, the Israeli Knesset passed a racist law authorizing the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of killing for nationalistic reasons. It establishes death by hanging as the default punishment for those crimes, exempting Israeli Jews from its application, and applies inside Israel as well as within the military justice system in the occupied West Bank, where the conviction rate is 96 percent, and due process is nonexistent. Torture and other forms of ill treatment are systematic against Palestinian security detainees, meaning that this law threatens to take survivors of torture – and execute them based on confessions extracted through torture.