Israel’s Racist Death Penalty Will Inevitably Lead to Executing More Innocents

Even the staunchest supporters of Israeli Justice Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s proposed death penalty bill surely would agree that neither Judaism nor any civilization should condone the judicial execution of an innocent human being. Yet, the legislation before the Knesset will doubtless result in this precise outcome for some Palestinians. It is obvious to rational minds that the death penalty will not deter would-be terrorists; instead, it will, of course, incite and entice more shaheeds (“martyrs”) to carry out retributive acts of terror, leading to more innocent Israeli deaths. Less evident to many individuals ignorant of the reality of the death penalty is the fact that this racist bill, which targets non-Jewish terrorists, will also inevitably result in the execution of innocent human beings. Indeed, this travesty of “justice” already has occurred in the modern state of Israel.

Before reflecting on that singular horror from decades ago, consider the unconscionable record of the killing of innocents in United States –  an illustration of the inherent fallibility of human judgment.  The reputable Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) lists 21 individuals who were executed but probably innocent since the death penalty resumed in the United Stated in 1976. DPIC qualifies this already inexcusable number with the following disclaimer:

“There is no way to tell how many of the 1654 people executed since 1976 may also have been inno­cent. Courts do not gen­er­al­ly enter­tain claims of inno­cence when the defen­dant is dead. Defense attor­neys move on to oth­er cas­es where clients’ lives can still be saved. It is now broad­ly accept­ed that the judi­cial review pro­vid­ed to death-penal­ty cas­es in the United States has been inad­e­quate to pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of at least some pris­on­ers who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death.”

In addition to this unfathomable reality of the execution of innocents, over 200 American prisoners condemned to death since 1973 have been exonerated of the charges related to their wrongful death sentences. (One of these, Elwood Jones, was exonerated from Ohio Death Row while this very essay was first being written.) At least one such wrongfully convicted person who escaped Florida’s death row was Jewish. Her name was Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, and she went on to become a beloved death penalty abolitionist before her death at 78 in 2025. Many other death row exonerees have joined in collective advocacy against capital punishment, sharing their incomprehensibly tragic testimonies as members of the group Witness to Innocence. How many more innocent individuals – Jewish or non- – must be posthumously executed or released before any society – including Israel – recognizes the imperfection of any human-crafted system of justice and stops the possibility of executing an innocent human being?

Ben-Gvir and his fellow proponents of death should look to Iran to note how the killing of innocents is the invariable by-product of any execution-bent regime. The thousands of members of the group L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty are keenly aware of Iran’s international shame when it comes to its use of the death penalty. L’chaim members have partnered with various Iranian human rights organizations to vocalize their horror over Iran’s bloody ledger, which includes the killing of many innocent human beings. L’chaim helped magnify international alarm over the plight of Nethanel ben Ziona Ghahremani, a 20-year-old Iranian Jew, whom the Ayatollahs executed in 2024 for a killing he committed in a clear-cut act of self-defense. Given the reality of the fog of war and the volatile, complex geopolitical landscape in Israel today, there can be little doubt that Israel’s blanket death penalty bill will sweep up some racially-targeted Palestinians who are engaged in self-defense, like Nethanel was in Iran, or who are otherwise innocent of charges of “terrorism.”

It is not so far-fetched to imagine, as well, that Israel’s racist bill would lead to the execution of innocent children. Palestinian youth are, after all, regularly implicated in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, whether accused for stone-throwing or used as unwitting human shields for Hamas, among any other roles. Many believe that the particular abomination of the execution of innocent children is limited to such barbaric execution regimes as Iran. History disproves this assumption. In the United States, George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was an African American boy who the state of South Carolina wrongfully executed at the age of 14 after convicting him, during an unfair trial, for the murders of two white girls. He was tried, wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to death all on a single day in April 1944 and then illegally executed by electric chair on June 16, 1944, after Governor Olin D. Johnston refused to grant him clemency. South Carolina waited until 2014 to vacate its racially-biased and bloodlust-laden conviction – eighty years too late. With Israel’s far-right so racially prejudiced and revenge-driven today, one shudders to imagine how many Palestinian “George Stinney, Jr.’s” that Israel’s death penalty bill advocating for “swift justice” would produce.

Jewish tradition unequivocally forbids the execution of anyone where there is any level of doubt about guilt or fairness. It is for this very reason that rabbinic tradition put in place such prodigious legal safeguards preventing the execution of the innocent. These essentially insurmountable guardrails made executions virtually impossible to carry out. Arguably, the most famous commentary on this subject comes from 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.”

As referenced above, the modern State of Israel has already failed this appropriately lofty bar that Maimonides set centuries ago. The Jewish State erroneously charged 44-year-old Israeli Defense Force officer, husband and father Meir Tobianski with treason in 1948. Israel promptly executed Tobianski via hanging after a rapid trial. On 1 July 1949, a year after Tobianski’s wrongful execution, the Israeli government informed his widow of Tobianski’s posthumous acquittal and reinstatement to rank. On 5 July, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion publicly exonerated Tobianski and on 7 July, his body was reburied in the IDF’s burial grounds on Mount Herzl with full military honors. High-ranking Israeli military officers attended the funeral, and the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Benzion Uziel, delivered the eulogy. On his military gravestone is written, “killed by mistake.”

Seventy-three years after Tobianski’s wrongful execution, the city of Jerusalem attempted to honor Tobianski by naming a street after him. How many more streets will the state of Israel need to dedicate to future posthumous exonerees if the current death penalty bill is enacted? A much better way to honor the neshama/spirit of Meir Tobianski, z’l, of blessed memory, is to follow Maimonides’ sage counsel and absolutely eliminate the possibility of wrongful execution by abolishing the death penalty altogether.

Maimonides’s charge for the protection of the innocent must inform the decision now before the Knesset. The spirits of Meir Tobianski, Sunny Jacobs, Nethanel ben Ziona Ghahremani, and young George Junius Stinney Jr. call out to Israel now, among countless other wrongfully executed human beings in the United States and across the world. These include some of L’chaim’s pen pals – individuals whose guilt remains very much in doubt until this very day. Together, they serve as the most potent reminder imaginable that one innocent death is far too many, and that human forms of “justice” are always fallible. For this reason alone, not to mention so many others, Israeli MKs have a moral, ethical, and spiritual imperative to vote against Ben Gvir’s death penalty bill, and to support the absolute abolition of capital punishment in the state of Israel, once and for all.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action