Preliminarily confirmed: Denial of October 7 massacre to be criminal offense

The Knesset plenum approved in a preliminary reading the bill prohibiting the denial of the October 7 massacre initiated by MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beiteinu).

The proposal was supported by 29 Knesset members and no opponents. The bill proposes to impose a five-year penalty on anyone who publishes statements that deny or downplay the October 7 massacre. It is also proposed to impose a five-year offense on the publisher of words of praise, sympathy or identification for those acts.

The explanatory notes to the proposal read: "On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists and their collaborators massacred Israeli residents living near the border with the Gaza Strip. In this framework, hundreds of civilians, women and men, girls and children, were kidnapped. During the infiltration of Hamas terrorists into communities near the border with Israel, Hamas terrorists and their collaborators slaughtered, murdered, dismembered, raped and looted more than 1,400 Israeli residents living near the border with the Gaza Strip, simply because they were Israelis and only because they were Jews."

The notes continued: "This is the deadliest and cruelest terror attack carried out in the history of the State of Israel, during which more than 1,400 men and women, including the elderly and babies, were murdered, more than 240 people were kidnapped, and many hundreds were injured. Denying the massacre is an attempt to rewrite history at this stage, in an attempt to conceal, minimize and mitigate the crimes committed against the Jewish people and the State of Israel."