Israeli Parliament votes unanimous to allow death penalty for those found guilty of Oct. 7 crimes

Israel's Knesset, the country's parliamentary body, on Monday legalized the death penalty for those convicted of genocide in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. 

The measure lawmakers passed also establishes a special military court to try about 300 suspects who are alleged to have been involved in the attacks. Security forces inside Israel detained the suspects, and the court is authorized to prosecute them for a range of crimes, including genocide. The court can then sentence those convicted of the crime to death. 

One of the bill's cosponsors, Yulia Malinovsky, compared the structure of the court to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis in the aftermath of World War II. She told reporters that she hoped the bill would enable the world to "see how the victims and their families look into the whites of the eyes of those murderers, rapists and kidnappers."

More than a fifth of the members of Knesset were absent or abstained from the vote, UPI reported, and a tense debate preceded the vote. One Israeli-Arab lawmaker accused supporters of the measure of being "politically exploiting" the grief of survivors' families. Some people had to be removed from the public gallery for disrupting the debates. 

Those suspected of, charged or found guilty of Oct. 7 offenses would be ineligible for prisoner swap or release schemes.