On 30 March 2026 the Knesset passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, 62 votes to 48. The death penalty (hanging, by default) for anyone who kills in an act of terrorism… as long as they’re a resident of the West Bank and not an Israeli citizen or resident. Tried by military courts, executed within 90 days.
Same act, different punishment, depending on who you are. Human Rights Watch calls it discriminatory, and it’s hard to read that clause any other way.
But before pointing fingers far away, it made me think of home.
In Spain, a Basque kid burning a bin could be tried for terrorism (the kale borroka years, when street violence was treated as part of ETA’s machinery), while a Catalan burning bins in Barcelona in 2019 mostly got public disorder. That’s how it stuck in my head, at least. The official difference is not where you were born but who is supposedly behind you. Still.
And the gender violence law: if a man hits his partner or ex, article 153 of the Criminal Code punishes it harder than if a woman does the same. The Constitutional Court upheld it in 2008, arguing that the aggravation isn’t about sex but about the context of domination the act reproduces.
So the question I’m left with: when does “same act, different law” stop being context and start being discrimination? Is the line whether the difference protects the weaker side, whether it’s written into the text or applied in practice, or something else?
If you have a clear criterion, or a good link, you’d make my day.