Ayala Ben Gvir presented her husband,Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, with a birthday cake decorated with a noose at a private party on 2 May 2026, in what was widely understood as a celebration of the death penalty legislation he championed that can be applied only to Palestinians.

The 50th birthday party, held at the agricultural community of Emunim near Ashdod in southern Israel, featuredtwo cakes adorned with noose imagery. Footage from the event, shared onBen Gvir's own Instagram account, showed Ayala giving her husband a smaller cake also bearing the symbol.

The celebration came exactly 33 days afterthe Knesset voted 62 to 47to pass a death penalty law that, in practice, applies exclusively to Palestinians.

The centrepiece of the evening, reported by theTimes of Israel, was a large three-tier cake topped with a golden noose, its base decorated with two guns pointing at a map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The inscription read: 'Congratulations to Minister Ben Gvir. Sometimes dreams come true.' The wording left nothing to interpretation.

Separately, footage from inside the party showed Ayala Ben Gvir presenting her husband with a second, smaller cake. It too was decorated with a large picture of a noose. The birthday party was held at a private venue, but the minister himself shared images and video from the night, including the cake photographs, on social media.

The noose has been Ben Gvir's deliberate, public symbol of choice since he began campaigning for the death penalty legislation. He wore a small metal noose-shaped lapel pin to the Knesset chamber on the night of the vote in March. Haaretz reported that members of his inner Kahanist circle had adopted the noose pin as what they called 'a symbol of the future,' describing its use as a 'vulgar celebration of death.'

The legislation that the noose celebrates was passed on 30 March 2026, whenthe Knesset voted 62 to 47, withPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuamong those voting in favour. The law instructs military courts to impose death by hanging as the mandatory punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of deadly acts of terrorism. Judges retain only vaguely defined latitude to substitute a life sentence under 'special circumstances.'

The sentence must be carried out within 90 days of conviction. Under the law's design, no right of appeal exists, and a simple judicial majority is sufficient to sentence a person to death by hanging. Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, told the Associated Press plainly: 'Jews will not be indicted under this law.'

Military courts try only West Bank Palestinians, who are not Israeli citizens. Israeli Jews convicted of violence against Palestinians are tried in civilian courts under a separate system, one that does not carry the death penalty for such offences. The result is a law that is, by structural design, imposed exclusively on one group.

Within minutes of the vote, theAssociation for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petitionwith Israel's Supreme Court, describing the law as 'discriminatory by design' and 'enacted without legal authority' over West Bank Palestinians. Amnesty International had warned in February that the legislation would make the death penalty 'another discriminatory tool in Israel's system of apartheid.'

Source: International Business Times UK