Ben Gvir’s noose will not bring security

Israel’s parliament is on the brink of making a momentous and terrible decision.

The bill before the Knesset to introduce the death penalty for convicted terrorists is likely to pass very soon. There are many arguments to be made against this measure, whose impact on the Jewish state will be immense. But until now, little attention has been focused on the central justification advanced by its proponents, the far-right Otzma Yehudit party led by security minister Itamar Ben Gvir: that it will act as a deterrent. The evidence suggests this belief is dangerously mistaken. If anything, to conduct the first executions in Israel since Adolf Eichmann was hanged in 1962 will increase, not reduce, terrorist violence.

Together with my colleague Professor Ron Dudai of Ben Gurion University, I set this out in an expert opinion we have written for the Supreme Court challenge to the bill’s constitutionality that will be lodged if it passes.

We begin by noting that if Israel does take this step, it will fly in the face of a powerful global trend: while in 1988 there were only 52 countries that had abolished the death penalty, by the end of 2025 the total had risen to 124. Of those that retain the death penalty in law, only 15 carried out executions in 2024, and only 33 have continued to impose death sentences and carry out executions over the past decade. By 2025 there were 42 countries that the UN terms ‘abolitionist de facto’, which means they had conducted no executions for at least 10 years. Recent abolitionists include Zimbabwe, a state not generally regarded as a beacon of human rights.

Aside from China, where the number of executions is a state secret, the busiest executioners can today be found in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. This is the company that Ben Gvir – now often seen sporting a noose lapel pin – wants Israel to keep.

While in 1988 there were only 52 countries that had abolished the death penalty, by the end of 2025 the total had risen to 124

To demonstrate that the death penalty acts a deterrent, the key question is not whether some people may be deterred, but whether a system that executes prisoners leads to lower rates of capital offences than one that uses alternative methods, such as life imprisonment. There is, however, a large body of evidence that suggests that the death penalty is an ineffective deterrent both in general, and with regard to terrorism.

To begin with, if the death penalty did act as a deterrent, then states that abolished it would see their murder rates rise. There is no evidence this has ever happened, in any jurisdiction. For example, following abolition in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Poland during the 1990s, homicide rates across all five countries declined by 61% between 2000 and 2008. In Israel itself, where the death penalty for murder was abolished in 1954, homicide rates declined significantly afterwards.

Comparing abolitionist and retentionist jurisdictions with similar characteristics also fails to show any deterrent impact. One sophisticated study compared murder rates between Singapore (which retains the death penalty) and Hong Kong (which does not). Over 30 years, homicide rates in both followed a similar path of decline, with no observed differences resulting from a spike in executions in Singapore in the mid-1990s, nor any rise in response to the abolition of the death penalty in Hong Kong in 1993.

Similarly, murder rates in Canada have gone up and down in vir­tu­al lock­step with the US rates for decades, though Canada has had no exe­cu­tions since 1962. In fact, dur­ing the peri­od just after the United States rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty after a four-year hiatus in 1976, mur­der rates remained high in the United States while declin­ing in Canada. Within the US, a study found that between 1974 and 2009, 447 executions occurred in the state of Texas, 13 occurred in California and none occurred in New York, yet rates of homicide followed similar patterns of fluctuation throughout this period across all three states.

The Israeli bill’s supporters claim that terrorism is somehow different: that even if the death penalty does not deter murder or other “ordinary” crimes, it will deter atrocities by organisations such as Hamas. However, the evidence suggests that in the case of terrorism, the absence of a deterrent effect is even more pronounced.

Those who carry out terrorist acts are usually ready to die for their causes, and presume they will be killed: indeed, as their pre-attack videos suggest, embracing martyrdom is a personal goal. It is also more likely that executions, rather than having a general deterrent effect, will instead encourage further violence and recruitment to terrorist groups.

The pro-Israel jurist Professor Alan Dershowitz expressed this view in relation to the Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, saying that if he were sentenced to death and executed, this would indeed confer martyr status: “His face would appear on recruiting posters for suicide bombers… Those seeking paradise through martyrdom would see him as a role model.” In their long struggle against the Provisional IRA, successive British governments recognised this argument, seeing that executing its members would be a “colossal blunder” that would only strengthen their cause.

If the death penalty did act as a deterrent, then states that abolished it would see their murder rates rise. There is no evidence this has ever happened, in any jurisdiction

Israel’s security agencies also appreciate these dangers, and have repeatedly briefed MKs and ministers that the working premise of perpetrators is that they probably will not survive. One eminent psychologist who specialises in profiling terrorists told Professor Dudai that the bill “will only cause more antagonism and more mobilisation for action and… make them greater shahids [martrys]”.

The point here is not moral, but utilitarian. The former justice minister Haim Zadok put this succinctly in 1993, writing: “I am not among those who oppose death penalty from principled-moral reasons. My test is ‘will death penalty help or harm the fight against terrorism?’ My answer is clear: it will not be helpful, and may bring damage.”

And then there is the inevitable, dismal downside of the bill: the deepening of divisions within Israel and between diaspora Jews; the damage to Israel’s international standing; the encouragement of the fanatical strain of anti-Zionism which has made it increasingly acceptable to state that Israel has no right to exist.

Maybe, just maybe, if executing terrorists really did deter them, all that would be worth it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

• Professor Carolyn Hoyle is Director of the Death Penalty Research Unit at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology