How are New Yorkers reacting to the Israeli occupation’s new death penalty law targeting only Palestinians? VPol contributor and independent journalist Jennifer Koonings asked people in the streets of NYC how they’d react if the US passed a law applying the death penalty to only one race or ethnicity. ￭ The new Israeli law makes the death penalty the default sentence for Palestinian prisoners convicted in military court of "deliberately causing the death of a ​person with the intent of ending Israel's existence." In the wording of the bill, "his sentence shall be death, and this penalty only." Israeli military courts in the West Bank have a 96% conviction rate of Palestinians. ￭ More than 9,600 Palestinian prisoners remain detained in Israeli prisons under brutal and torturous conditions.