I don’t even know where to start today. I’m sitting here with my chest tight and my hands shaking slightly and I just keep thinking: what kind of world is this? What kind of people do this and celebrate?

Israel passed it. 62 to 48. Death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism, by hanging, within 90 days, with no right to appeal. And the moment those votes were tallied, they popped champagne on the floor of parliament. He was literally wearing a tiny metal noose pin on his lapel when he walked in. He knew what he was there to do. He celebrated like he’d just won a championship. Some lawmakers stood up and cheered. “We made history,” he said afterward.

I can barely type that without my stomach turning.

Let’s be brutally clear about what this law actually is. It doesn’t apply symmetrically. It doesn’t apply to Jewish Israelis who murder Palestinians, and they do, and they have, and very few of them have ever faced serious consequences for it. This law, by design, by explicit structure, targets one group of people based on their ethnicity. The conviction rate in Israeli military courts, the courts that will be handing down these death sentences, sits at around 96%. Rights groups have documented that many of those convictions are built on confessions extracted through torture. And now there’s no appeal. You get 90 days and a rope.

The UN called it a violation of international law. Amnesty International said it could constitute a war crime. Four European nations, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, begged Israel to pull the bill before the vote. They were ignored. Netanyahu, who apparently once worried this law would endanger Israeli hostages still in Gaza, walked into the Knesset and voted for it in person once the ceasefire was in place and those concerns became inconvenient.

I am so tired of watching cruelty get dressed up as justice.

I think about what it means to be a Palestinian prisoner in that system right now. About 9,500 people currently held. Families who haven’t heard from their loved ones in over two years. A woman whose brother has been in solitary confinement since October 2023, who has been beaten so badly he can’t sleep on his back, who has had dogs set on him in his cell, and who has been denied treatment for his rheumatism since the war began. She said she wakes up every morning afraid to check the news. Afraid she’ll find his name among the dead.

And on the other side of that reality, men in suits are popping champagne.

I believe that human dignity is not conditional. It is not earned by being on the right side of a conflict, or holding the right passport, or worshipping the right way. It is not a reward. It is a baseline. And any system, any government, any law, any parliament, that builds a legal structure explicitly designed to deny that baseline to one group of people while protecting another has crossed a line that I don’t think you can uncross without consequences to your own soul as a civilization.

This isn’t security. This isn’t justice. This is vengeance codified into law, celebrated with alcohol, and dressed up in the language of sovereignty.

I’m angry. I’m exhausted. And I’m deeply, deeply sad, not just for Palestinians living under this, but for what it means that the world watched this happen and the most powerful governments on earth issued statements and then went home.

History is watching. It always is. And it is not kind to people who pop champagne over the death of the powerless.