Historical and Modern Voices of Reason Against Israel’s Death Penalty Bill: Pt.1

(Note: This post is Part 1 of the two-part series “Historical and Modern Voices of Reason Against Israel’s Death Penalty Bill.” Please see Part 2 for the second installment.)

The ongoing public debate over Israel’s proposed death penalty for terrorists bill has highlighted a fundamental existential question for Israelis and Jews across the world. The bill’s opponents rightfully expose the false claim that the death penalty would deter terrorists and murderers. They demonstrate that executions would only incite more individuals among Israel’s enemies to seek martyrdom as “shaheeds.”

As the reality of this truth sinks in – and in an attempt to redirect the conversation and double-down on the pro-death approach – proponents of the bill then pivot to a more existential argument: “What is the downside,” they invariably ask, “to executing terrorists anyway?”

For them, it matters not that UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk just today denounced Israel for its proposed legislation to execute Palestinians. They ignore Türk’s reminder that “when it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accuses individuals who make such comments of being “Hamas supporters.” This attitude begs the question: what responsibility, after all, does a society have to care for those who have committed the most horrific atrocities imaginable?

This profoundly consequential query merits a comprehensive response. It reflects a moral dilemma that has plagued humanity since time immemorial. As outlined in the Third Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life.” Over 70 percent of nations have realized this and abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Supporters of Israel’s death penalty bill, like Ben Gvir, now would do well to learn from some of the innumerable human rights luminaries across the centuries who have joined the ranks of civilized humanity in realizing why it indeed matters how a society treats the least among them.

Though I am the co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” a group with thousands of members from across the world, I myself used to support the death penalty, as have others in our group. Then, I became a prison chaplain, which opened my eyes to the horrors of capital punishment. Since that time, I have learned about the countless prominent historical and contemporary figures who have also opposed the death penalty. I wish I had known of their positions sooner so that I might have seen the light of abolition at a younger age.

We all should know the caliber of the cross-section of human leaders united against the death penalty. This list is by no means comprehensive, nor are any of the individuals on it without foibles; yet each has served as a kind of leader for their nation and/or the human race in their own way. Collectively, they form a most formidable group who have devoted blood, sweat, tears, and volumes of writing to help our species evolve morally, ethically, and spiritually. May all Israelis now heed their call on the issue of state-sponsored murder.

Renowned Jewish Death Abolitionists: Elie Wiesel, Martin Buber, René Cassin, Albert Einstein

As the bill before the Knesset renders this very much a “Jewish issue,” let us begin with some of the more well-known Jewish abolitionists. These are, of course,  innumerable Jewish death penalty abolitionists who proliferate across the world today. These include L’chaim co-founder Abraham J. Bonowitz, Rabbi Shmuley Yanklowitz, former capital federal defense lawyer and writer Stephen A. Cooper, capital defense attorney Marshall Dayan, and film-maker Sabrina van Tassel, among many others.

Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) is perhaps the most acclaimed in this category. When asked about his view on capital punishment, he famously said, “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” He also said what has become our anthem in L’chaim:

“With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.”

The lessons that Weisel learned from his walk with death during the Holocaust were echoed by famed Jewish theologian Martin Buber. Buber was among a cadre of leading Jewish intellectuals who tried to stop Israel from executing Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. Jewish abolitionist Arthur Feinsod recounts Buber’s words in his essay “Words from the Interfaith Wise” in  From the Killing Fields of the Federal Government: Interfaith Essays on the Resumption of Executions.

For Buber, writes Feinsod, the commandment “Thou Shalt not Kill” applied to the state as much as to the individual. Buber added, “I do not accept the state’s right to take the life of any man” and that ‘‘as far as it depends on us, we should not kill, neither as individuals nor as a society.” Buber also later said to Newsweek that “The death sentence has not diminished crime–on the contrary, all this exasperates men…Killing awakens killing.’” Perhaps the celebrated, late Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a similar idea in mind when she famously said, “If I were queen, there would be no death penalty.”

René Cassin, a Sephardic Jew who himself had been sentenced to death, no doubt considered this as well when he helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As previously stated, this included Article 3’s assertion that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person,” and Article 5’s stipulation that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Of course, the death penalty is anathema to both of these articles, as both Mr. Cassin and his fellow document author, Eleanor Roosevelt, among others, well knew.

To round out our small sample of Jewish opinions, let us consider conclusions on this matter from another human being who has helped advance humanity: Albert Einstein. “I have reached the conviction,” he wrote, “that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure.”

Regarding the first point, it does not take someone of the caliber of Einstein to realize that there rightfully should be no tolerance for the execution of an individual who is innocent of an alleged capital crime. The reputable Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) writes that, given the fallibility of human judgment, there has always been the danger that an execution could result in the killing of an innocent person.

Since 1973 in the United States, over 200 death-row prisoners have been exonerated of the charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row. (One such wrongfully accused individual who escaped Florida’s death row was Jewish: Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, who went on to become a Jewish death penalty abolitionist in the United States and passed away at 78 in 2025.) How many more innocent individuals must be released before any society – including Israel – recognizes the fallibility of any human-crafted system of justice and stops the possibility of executing an innocent human being?

Einstein’s comments reflect the feelings of one of the most renowned Jewish sages: the Rambam, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204). Maimonides, as he is often called, was a Sephardic Jewish physician and philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. As he famously wrote of capital punishment in Sefer HaMitzvot, Prohibition 290: “It is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.” And yet: Israel has already done just that with its 1948 execution of innocent Israeli Defense Force officer Meir Tobianski, whom the Jewish State hanged and posthumously exonerated. Einstein and Maimonides’ charge for the protection of the innocent must inform the decision now in the Knesset: one innocent death is one too many.

Modern Israel

Many abolitionist voices in modern-day Israel draw upon these Jewish voices as well as a Jewish tradition that places so many guardrails on capital punishment as to render it virtually impossible to carry out. I personally witnessed these Israeli abolitionists recently, when I had the profound honor of representing thousands of L’chaim members at a powerful gathering of Israeli and Jewish human rights groups for a webinar focused on the proposed bill to impose the death penalty on non-Jewish terrorists.

Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel (RHR) and The Association for Civil Rights in Israel hosted an online Hanukkah event titled “We Will Drive out the Darkness by Increasing the Light.” Rabbi Avi Dabush, the Executive Director of RHR, and Rabbi Kobi Weiss of RHR – who passionately spoke against the bill in the Knesset recently – were joined by Attorney Elza Bugnet of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights for a most enlightening conversation that framed the death penalty within Jewish law and the lighting of the Hanukkah candles.

These organizations demonstrated their alliance with many American Jewish rabbinical and clergy associations that have publicly declared their opposition to the death penalty. These include the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA).

Muslim, Jewish, and Christian members of the inspiring Israel-based peace organization Combatants for Peace amplified this shared affirmation of life by demonstrating visibly and vocally at a recent rally in Beit Jala against the death penalty bill. They carried signs emphasizing the principle of “K’dushat HaChayyim” – the inviolable sacredness of life – mirroring the human right to life enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Protestors unequivocally called upon Israelis to say “No to the Death Penalty.” By organizing this event and invoking the right to life for all human beings, Combatants for Peace confirmed its stance as a beacon for all Israelis.

Likewise, members of the Israel Medical Association stated unequivocally that they “will not become executioners on behalf of the state.” The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) also echoes Einstein’s aforementioned point about the death penalty as constituting torture. PCATI Executive Director Sari Bashi’s recent testimony against this bill in the Knesset reaffirmed this position. PCATI understands well the fact that members of the Death Row Soul Collective (one of whose co-founders, Karine Omry, is also based in Israel) and of L’chaim have witnessed firsthand in our direct communication with over one hundred Jewish and non-Jewish human beings condemned to death. Namely, the death penalty often results in physical torture, and always is psychological torture for individuals counting down to their execution day. There is no humane way to execute human beings against their will.

The consensus from all these Israeli groups and countless other social commentators is abundantly clear: there is no place for the death penalty in Israel, nor in any civilized society. Renowned Jerusalem-based Orthodox rabbi Yitz Greenberg perhaps encapsulated this message best when he wrote in the Jerusalem Post that the death penalty debate places “Jewish reverence for life” against death penalty bill-architect Justice Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s “cheapening of life.” Greenberg added that “in degrading terrorists and criminals, Itamar Ben-Gvir is trashing Jewish religious values and cheapening everybody’s life.”

Civil Rights Leaders: Sojourner Truth, MLK, Coretta Scott King, Bernice King, Bryan Stevenson

The inherent racism of Israel’s death penalty bill – which undeniably values Jewish over non-Jewish lives – mirrors the racism in the application of the death penalty in the United States, and the legacy of lynching that it perpetuates. This fact necessitates that we consider the abolitionist voices of civil rights leaders. In the nineteenth century, as death penalty proponents sought to bring back capital punishment to Michigan in 1881.

Sojourner Truth fought against the death penalty, just as she had campaigned against slavery and the subjugation of women. Truth’s moral authority and fervent testimony before the state legislature successfully fought off those efforts. “I’ve heard that you are going to have hanging again in this state,” she said. “Where is the man or woman who can sanction such a thing as that? We are the makers of murderers if we do it.” Truth’s wisdom proved prophetic for civil rights leaders who followed her lead in the next century.

In a November 1957 article in Ebony, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  was asked, “Do you think God approves the death penalty for crimes like rape and murder?” He responded, “I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included…. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”

Later, in his sermon “Loving Your Enemies,” Dr. King preached a philosophy that had no room for capital retribution: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.” And finally, this most impactful statement from Dr. King: “Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society’s final assertion that it will not forgive.”

After Dr. King’s assassination, the words of his bereaved widow, Coretta Scott King, echo his spirit and reverberate for us all. “As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died as the victims of murder and assassination,” she wrote, “I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder.” She also poignantly asked: “Can we expect a decent society if the state is allowed to kill its own people?”

Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, stated the same position quite succinctly when she responded to a comment on Twitter that assumed any family member of a murder victim would support death. “Someone in my family has been murdered,” she wrote, and then added immediately: “Abolish the death penalty.”

Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative continues this tradition today, along with many other civil and human rights activists. As Stevenson wrote in Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.” In the same book, Stevenson penned: “The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is: ‘Do we deserve to kill?’” Stevenson is also rightfully praised for reminding humanity of the relevant truth that “each person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.”

India and Pakistan: Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Abdul Ghaffar Khan

Human rights leaders who are death penalty abolitionists are not limited to American shores. In India, Mahatma Gandhi powerfully challenged the misinterpretation of the Biblical notion of “an eye for an eye” by saying, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” One might imagine how Gandhi would view our proverbial blindness today in the USA. As Gandhi also stated:  “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

Another Indian human rights hero, Mother Teresa, realized the same truth as Gandhi, and famously said: “What you do to these men on California’s Death Row, you do to God.” In nearby Pakistan, Abdul Ghaffar Khan not only marched with Gandhi but was also one of the most well-known advocates of non-violence among modern-day Muslims. As he wrote: “The Holy Prophet Mohammed taught us that a Muslim is a man who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God’s creatures. Belief in God is to love one’s fellow men.”

(Note: To be continued in Part 2 of this series, which is forthcoming in the next blog post here.)

Cantor Michael Zoosman, MSM, Board Certified Chaplain, Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains

Co-Founder: “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty” 

Advisory Board Member: Death Penalty Action