The Yisrael Beitenu party headed by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, on Wednesday, 9 Teves, plans to submit a bill that would permit applying the death penalty to terrorists convicted of murder. The party will present the bill to the Knesset for its preliminary reading.

Lieberman has been a longtime advocate of the death penalty for convicted terrorists, a policy that is not meted out in Israel for fear of what will occur to capture military personnel.

Lieberman met with party faction members, explaining that each terrorist entering the Israeli prison system serves as an addition incentive to terror. He cited that even Massachusetts, a liberal US State, has sentenced the Boston Marathon bomber to death and there is not reason for Israel not to follow the world’s greatest democracy.

Members of support groups for bereaved families, those whom have lost loved ones to terror, were also present during the faction meeting, expressing their support for the bill.

Yisrael Beitenu MK Robert Ilatov feels passing the bill into law would be “correcting an historical injustice”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)