As the world holds it breath and Trump threatens to rain Armageddon on Iran at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (set your dials!), the U.S. media have only obliquely reported Israel’s new death penalty, passed into law last week.

Here’s what the Times had to say:

“Israel’s Parliament passed a law on Monday that would allow the hanging of Palestinians convicted of deadly militant attacks, but experts say it almost certainly cannot be applied to Jewish extremists convicted of similar crimes. The law is a victory for Israel’s far right and reflects the country’s shift to a harder line against Palestinians.”

“The legislation makes death by hanging the default sentence in Israeli military courts for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks. Israeli citizens — both Jewish and Palestinian Arab — could also face the death penalty for killings intended to ‘negate the existence of the State of Israel.’ Experts say, however, the chances that it would be applied to Jewish Israelis for attacks against Palestinians are minimal.”

In other words, Jewish West Bank settlers won’t be held accountable for murdering Palestinians because their acts aren’t a negation of the existence of the State of Israel.

“Before the law passed, Britain, France, Italy and Germany urged [Israeli] lawmakers not to enact it.”

The executions will be carried out by hanging because the Israeli medical establishment has refused to participate with death by lethal injection. The executions will have to be completed within 180 days. The time limit will make it even harder for death row inmates to appeal their conviction.

This is the country that the U.S. has followed blindly into the most consequential war of our times. Don’t forget to set that dial to 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time!

I’m a Jew and I have loved Israel over the course of my life. I visited the country in 2000, not long before the second Intifada began, and I saw how Palestinians already lived in an apartheid state. But I still felt the call of a Jewish homeland, despite its deep-running flaws.

The genocide in Gaza is a crime against humanity. The occupation of southern Lebanon is sure to bring about yet another humanitarian crisis. The war in Iran is threatening the stability of the world (not protecting Americans). And the new racist and inhumane death penalty reveals that Israel can be considered nothing less than a full-blown apartheid state.