Image: Willie Pye, executed by the state of Georgia on March 20th, 2024, 171 years to the day after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Like slavery, capital punishment is fundamentally racist.  (Photo courtesy of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty)

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In honour of Juneteenth, we - the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” are republishing the essay below that was published two years ago in both Counterpunch and the Times of Israel ahead of Georgia’s March 20, 2024 state murder of Willie Pye.

As the Death Penalty Information Center reminds us: “Use of the death penalty has always reflected racial bias: the data show that who is prosecuted, sentenced, and executed depends heavily on race.”

Now, with Israel having passed an insidiously racist death penalty law of its own, it is more important than ever that we acknowledge the fact that the death penalty brings out the very worst of the human character, including the base racist impulse.

This is yet another reason why Holocaust survivor and passionate death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel, of blessed memory, famously state of the death penalty “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

If you agree, please join the ranks of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” by clicking here.

Thank you, and L’chaim- to Life!

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC Jewish Prison Chaplain

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

Advisory Committee Member:Death Penalty Action

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From ‘Uncle Tom’ to Willie Pye: Abolishing the Death Penalty’s Racist Legacy

By Cantor Michael Zoosman

Published in the Times of Israel, MAR 14, 2024, 10:17 PM

(Note: This essay first appeared in Counterpunch on March 14, 2024.)

Georgia is poised to execute Mr. Willie Pye, a Black man, on March 20th, the very same day that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s seminal antislavery work Uncle Tom’s Cabinwas published in book form, to global acclaim, in 1852. Many are likely unaware of this date’s historical significance, but as someone who grew up not far from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Centerin Hartford, CT, it is an alignment that strikes me as significant. This certainly unintended synchronicity highlights yet again the unmistakable link between slavery and the death penalty, and the fitting use of the same word – abolition – to apply to the movements to end both of these menacing institutions. 

It is well-known that the death penalty in its historical context is demonstrably a “descendant of slavery, lynching and segregation.”Likewise, it is well-established that racial bias against defendants of color has a strong effect on who is ultimately capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed. Whereas Willie Pye was indeed convicted of a capital crime, the only “crime” committed by the appropriately controversialcharacter of Uncle Tom – based in part on the Rev. Josiah Henson – was that he was born African-American and, therefore, a slave in antebellum America. Still, racism, a legacy of lynching, and the system of mass incarceration – which Michelle Alexander poignantly coined as “The New Jim Crow” – form an historical arc that connects America’s “peculiar institution” of slavery to its persistent death chambers, thereby linking the lethal plights of the literary figure of the slave known as Uncle Tom with the very real Mr. Pye.

Statistics in Georgia and in Mr. Pye’s case present glaring examples of this long arm of historical injustice. As Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penaltyhas revealed, Spalding County, where Mr. Pye was tried and convicted in the mid-1990s, has sought the death penalty disproportionately against Black defendants. Additionally, Mr. Pye’s trial attorney Johnny B. Mostiler was not only wildly ineffective but had a long and well-documented history of anti-Black racism. In his resulting grossly-inadequate defense of Mr. Pye, he failed to assemble a team that should have included a mitigation specialist with the expertise required to conduct a thorough investigation into his client’s deeply traumatic childhood and the pervasive racism in the community in which he was raised. The jury notably did not hear that Mr. Pye was reared in an environment of severe poverty, neglect, and abuse. Neither did they see the vast evidence of the violence and chaos in his household, including the fact that Child and Family Services was called into his home often, but never saw fit to remove young Willie to a safer place. Rather, the jury only heard a single fleeting reference to the fact that his family was poor. 

These glaring omissions contributed to the verdict of death that Georgia’s laws allowed the jury to hand down to Mr. Pye. The insidiousness of this racist system of laws becomes clearer when one considers that the same state that failed to rescue young Willie from his broken home as a child now welcomes his legal killing as an adult. Such a fundamentally flawed legal framework calls to mind the South’s antiquated antebellum laws that allowed slave owners like Simon Legree to command their overseers to put property the likes of Uncle Tom to death without a fair trial, a fate that has been shared by countless African-Americans. 

Just as racism has found this insidious way to allow for state-sanctioned murder in the form of executions, so, too, does its scourge inspire countless souls to oppose it. As the co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” – a group of nearly 3,300 individuals worldwide – I am among those in whom a fire has been lit to work to eradicate this cancerous blight on the Peach State, and across the globe. On Sept. 21st, 2011, it was none other than Georgia that infamously put to death another African-American, Troy Davis, an innocent man whose case captured the hearts of so many individuals, including this cantor, who was a younger Jewish prison chaplain at the time.  Not until well after that fateful day did I discover that lethal injection – Georgia’s preferred killing method for Troy Davis, Willie Pye and others it condemns to death – perpetuates the demonic mark of yet another notorious, racist regime that directly targeted my own people. Let there be no doubt: lethal injection is a direct Nazi legacy. It was first implemented in this world by the Third Reich as part of its infamous Aktion T4 protocol used to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” That protocol was developed by Dr. Carl Brandt, personal physician of Adolf Hitler. This unconscionable Nazi imprimatur, as well as that of the “novel” gassing executions now being proposed and carried out across the nation –  including via Zyklon B, as used in Auschwitz – has made it a non-starter for the Black and Jewish communities to stand united in the sacred cause of abolishing capital punishment. 

To offset the macabre historical arcs and ongoing cycles of violence that this March 20th unwittingly brings full-circle, one is reminded of the famous quote of renowned death penalty abolitionist Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. “The arc of the moral universe is long,” Dr. King proffered, “but it bends towards justice.” King was echoing the words of 19th-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who like Harriet Beecher Stowe was an avowed slavery abolitionist. They were ultimately successful in their mission, of course, a fact that should inspire all those engaged in this latest iteration of the abolitionist cause. In order to be on the correct arc of history, Georgians should sign the growing petition to spare the life of Mr. Pye, and join the cause of death penalty abolition, relinquishing the racist and Nazi legacy of the death penalty once and for all. 

When Abraham Lincoln encountered Harriet Beecher Stowe, he famously called her “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Perhaps with the efforts of today’s generation of abolitionists, the United States can take the necessary next step of finally erasing the death penalty’s remaining lethal footprint from that awful conflagration that defined an age, and whose central issue –  racism – still casts its deadly shadow across America in 2024. 

Caption: The grave of George Stinney, Jr., a boy executed in 1944 and exonerated in 2014. South Carolina recently has added the firing squad to its approved methods of executions. How many more innocent deaths will it take? (Source: South Carolina Department of Archives and History)

Today’s 82nd anniversary of South Carolina’s wrongful execution of 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr. underscores the reality that the death penalty inevitably leads to the murder of innocents. At a time when recorded executions globally have reached their highest annual figure in 44 years, per the latest report, young Stinney’s tragic fate should serve as a potent reminder of one of the many reasons why the death penalty has no place in this world.

We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” from across Israel and the world are keenly aware of this fact. As our founder-in-spirit, Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate and death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel, z’l, famously said of capital punishment: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” If you agree with his conclusion, please consider joining our group at the link above.

To mark this horrific anniversary, “L’chaim is republishing the post below that was first published in the Times of Israel earlier this year under the title “Israel’s Racist Death Penalty will Inevitably Lead to Executing more Innocents.” May it help to open and change hearts and minds.

L’chaim - To Life!

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

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

by Cantor Michael Zoosman Jan 5, 2026, 5:46 AM

Above: Husband, father and Israeli Defense Force officer Meir Tobianski (1904-1948), whom Israel falsely charged with treason, wrongfully executed by hanging, and posthumously exonerated. Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/10/26/73-years-after-israels-first-execution-street-to-honor-wrongfully-accused/ Below: A quote from the Rabbinic sage Maimonides, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) (No copyright.)

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?

Image: Jewish Florida Death row survivor Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, Z’L, right, with Abe Bonowitz, left, co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Source: Abe Bonowitz. (No Copyright.)

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.

Composite Image: Left - A hanging effigy of Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir - wearing his trademark noose lapel pin - at a pro-Palestine protest in Montreal on May 24, 2026. (Credit: Screenshot of an Instagram story by Montreal for Palestine/ @mtl4pal) Right - A birthday cake featuring a golden noose and guns is presented to Ben Gvir, who sports the same noose lapel at his 50th birthday party, on May 2, 2026. (Screenshot: Itamar Ben Gvir via Instagram)

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Note: An initial version of this article was published in the Forward on June 2, 2026.

The hanging effigies of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and President Donald Trump on display at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Montreal serve as the latest nauseating reminder that calling for executions only feeds the cycle of violence. In this case, as with Hamas’ recent threatening response to Israel’s new capital punishment laws, it also unmistakably fuels antisemitic fervor. The thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” across Israel and the world, including this author, have been keenly aware of this reality in advocating for years to end capital punishment in the United States, Israel, Iran and globally, without exception.

To be abundantly clear: there is no excuse for anyone to regurgitate the antisemitic filth that this recent display in my Canadian country of residence demonstrates. Yet, there can also be no doubt that Israel’s passage of two laws calling for the death penalty for terrorists only ripens the environment for this insidious form of hate to take root and fester. The fact that the executed effigies of Ben Gvir and Netanyahu feature the same noose lapel pin that Ben Gvir has worn for months as he championed these death penalty laws through the Knesset underscores this point.

The lesson is simple: the call for death only fuels the urge for more killing. Once any society exposes itself to the Pandora’s Box of state-sponsored killings of prisoners, all bets on civilized humanity are off. This includes Ben Gvir’s pre-Passover celebration of death, Hamas’ reciprocal call for violence against IDF soldiers, and now this veritable danse macabre in Montreal. It is for this reason that Elie Wiesel prophetically stated of capital punishment: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

Hanging Effigies: A Violation of Human Dignity and Jewish Values

The effigies — captured in videos posted on social media — became the subject of a hate crimes investigation on Tuesday and drew widespread condemnation from both local and provincial politicians across Canada who called the effigies “unacceptable” and Jewish groups who deemed them “antisemitic.” Montreal4Palestine, the group that hosted the mobilization where the effigies were most recently filmed, denied these accusations, writing on Instagram that it “strongly condemns the defamatory accusations and deliberate distortion of events.” Montreal4Palestine added that it has spent years raising awareness in Montreal, regularly striving to “unite Montrealers of all religious backgrounds.” It held that it has “stood firmly against all forms of hate, including antisemitism,” and continued that it seeks to uphold “values of human dignity, freedom of expression and solidarity among communities.” (Italics are my own.) The group stated that the effigies in question “were directed specifically at political figures” and “at no point were [they] intended to represent Judaism, Jewish people, or any religious, ethnic, or identifiable community.”

The effigies have understandably been condemned by Israeli media and Jewish groups. Paola Samuel, B’nai Brith’s regional director for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, called the images a “shocking, blatant display of antisemitism.” The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) — which represents Jewish federations across Canada — wrote “this is not a debate about the Middle East. They added that “hanging effigies of Jews in the streets of Montreal evokes some of the darkest antisemitic imagery in history and is completely unacceptable….This is not ‘peaceful activism.’ It is the promotion of hatred and the incitement of violence that fuels the radicalization of our social climate.”

Determining the extent to which this disgusting spectacle constituted an act of antisemitism is indeed important, now more than ever in this fraught world where Jews are easy targets for such vitriol. Focusing solely on that question, however, results in the obscuring of another equally important point: the reality that any call for execution - whether by Israel or by pro-Palestinian protesters is a direct violation of the very same value of “human dignity” that Montreal4Palestine claims to uphold, and that is so central to Judaism and its inherent affirmation of and reverence for life. Israel’s death penalty laws are monstrous, by any degree of the imagination. The decision of protestors to respond with a depiction of the execution of proponents of the death penalty, like Ben Gvir, Netanyahu, and Trump, is also horrific and unacceptable.

Hamas’ Renewed Calls for Violence After Israel’s Death Penalty Laws

The shameful Montreal event is reminiscent of the fact that Hamas leadership has called for the kidnapping of IDF soldiers following the two death penalty laws for convicted terrorists that the Knesset passed since the start of the year. Tragically, and as expected, that development, like the effigies, only confirms the worst fears that opponents of Israel’s renewed execution push have articulated time and again. It is horrendous proof positive that these laws jeopardize the safety and security of Jews across the globe.

Despite the clear-cut evidence that judicial state killings would only encourage reprisal, many proponents of Israel’s execution laws have since doubled down on their pro-death stance. Various advocates of execution have responded to Hamas’ threats by stating that Israel, therefore, should hang all imprisoned terrorists. In doing so, they fail to consider how such actions would only further perpetuate the cycle of violence. A closer examination of Hamas’ recent threats unequivocally demonstrates this fact.

In the document that was released, Hamas leadership stated clearly that it is planning to intensify efforts to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The terrorist group framed these proposed kidnappings as the only effective means of securing the release of Palestinian prisoners facing state violence, according to an internal message published Monday by Israeli Public Broadcaster KAN News. The letter, circulated internally among Hamas operatives in Gaza, came after the Knesset passed the second of two laws that would impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists.

Hamas described the most recent of these death penalty laws as a “fascist law,” and urged members of the organization’s military wing to escalate and carry out “active operations.” The internal communique reportedly emphasized what Hamas described as the strategic importance of abducting Israeli soldiers, calling it “the only path” to securing the release of Palestinian prisoners facing violence by Israel. Crucially, Hamas further warned that the execution of Palestinian prisoners could trigger broader escalation with soldiers in the Gaza envelope. “Any harm to the life of a prisoner is an explosive that will lead to the eruption of a volcano,” the letter read.

These developments underscore how the upcoming debate in the Israeli Supreme Court about the legality of the “Death Penalty for Terrorists” Law (the first of Israel’s two new execution-related laws) is one of the most consequential to come before that esteemed judicial body in the twenty-first century. Its outcome impacts not only the State of Israel but Jews everywhere. If the Supreme Court fails to repeal the law – if the unconscionable stain of executions succeeds in darkening the moral fabric of Israeli society – antisemitic extremists will assuredly blame all Jews for their state’s sponsored murder program, neatly fitting it into their warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “Death Cult.” For such extremists, that may very well be all it takes to replace hanging effigies with hanging human beings.

If repeal at the Supreme Court level succeeds, however, then it might set a precedent for the eventual repeal of the second death penalty law that Israel subsequently passed, specifically targeting convicted terrorists who carried out the reprehensible Oct. 7, 2023, massacres across Israel. For this reason alone, amidst many others, Israeli Supreme Court justices must redeem Israel by casting a resounding “No!” in response to the first of these death penalty laws now before them. They should unconditionally repeal this law, encouraging Israel to return to the civilized, abolitionist path for which Wiesel called. Only then can Israel begin to halt the seemingly endless cycle of violence and killing, 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

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(Note: This article was simultaneously published in the Times of Israel.)

Various reputable media outlets recently reported that Hamas leadership has called for the kidnapping of IDF soldiers following the two death penalty laws for convicted terrorists that the Knesset passed since the start of the year. Tragically, and as expected, this development only confirms the worst fears that opponents of Israel’s renewed execution push - including the thousands of members of our group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in Israel and across the world - have articulated time and again. Hamas’ most recent response is horrendous proof positive that these laws jeopardize the safety and security of Jews across the globe.

Hamas’ Response, like the Death Penalty Itself, Perpetuates the Cycle of Violence

Despite this clear-cut evidence that judicial state killings would only encourage reprisal, many proponents of these execution laws have since doubled-down on their pro-death stance. Various advocates of execution have responded to Hamas’ threats by stating that Israel therefore should hang all imprisoned terrorists. In doing so, they fail to consider how such actions would only further perpetuate the cycle of violence. A closer examination of Hamas’ recent monstrous threat unequivocally demonstrates.

In the document that was released, Hamas leadership stated clearly that it is planning to intensify efforts to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The terrorist group framed these proposed kidnappings as the only effective means of securing the release of Palestinian prisoners facing execution, according to an internal message published Monday by Israeli Public Broadcaster KAN News. The letter, circulated internally among Hamas operatives in Gaza, came after the Knesset passed the second of two laws that would impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists.

Hamas described the most recent of these death penalty laws as a “fascist law,” and urged members of the organization’s military wing to escalate and carry out “active operations.” The internal communique reportedly emphasized what Hamas described as the strategic importance of abducting Israeli soldiers, calling it “the only path” to securing the release of Palestinian prisoners facing execution by Israel. Crucially, Hamas further warned that the execution of Palestinian prisoners could trigger broader escalation with soldiers in the Gaza envelope. “Any harm to the life of a prisoner is an explosive that will lead to the eruption of a volcano,” the letter read.

This development punctuates how the upcoming debate in the Israeli Supreme Court about the legality of the “Death Penalty for Terrorists” Law (the first of Israel’s two new execution-related laws) is one of the most consequential to come before that esteemed judicial body in the twenty-first century. Its outcome impacts not only the State of Israel, but Jews everywhere. If the Supreme Court fails to repeal the law – if the unconscionable stain of executions succeeds in darkening the moral fabric of Israeli society – antisemitic extremists will assuredly blame all Jews for their state’s sponsored murder program, neatly fitting it into their warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “Death Cult.” If it succeeds, however, then it might set a precedent for the eventual repeal of the second death penalty law that Israel subsequently passed, specifically targeting convicted terrorists who carried out the monstrous Oct. 7, 2023, massacres across Israel.

Death Penalty Laws Will Entice Future Shaheeds (“Martyrs”) and Endanger Jews Globally

Beyond Hamas’ latest threat, there is ample reason to conclude that the prospect of martyrdom through execution would only increase the likelihood of future acts of terror across Israel. A renowned comment regarding the well-established relationship between the death penalty and a desire for martyrdom comes from 19th-century writer Eliphas Levi. Levi demonstrated a keen understanding of the dynamics at play when he wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.”

Applying Levi’s wisdom to modern-day Israel, it becomes clear that a mandatory death sentence for Palestinians who murder Jews will almost certainly increase the number of terrorist attacks. Radical Islamist terrorists – like those who perpetrated mass murder on October 7th, 2023 – celebrate martyrdom to receive the supposed rewards awaiting them in paradise. They want to die for their cause. Their preference is for martyrdom in the act of killing. Still, if they can kill and then be placed on a pedestal to be lauded as heroes facing the death penalty for their cause, then all the better, even more so if they get to become celebrities in a world where Israel is hated because of how it treats non-Jewish citizens. If these death penalty laws are now implemented, these scenarios could happen. Why would Israel want to encourage potential terrorists? On this purely practical level, this kind of legislation is insane. A far harsher punishment is incarceration. Let perpetrators consider what they have done and why they endure the constrictions of a maximum-security prison every day. As a former Jewish prison chaplain, I can personally attest to this harsh reality.

As stated above, proponents of the death penalty have argued that executing terrorists will prevent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps. Israel can avoid this simply by changing the law to forbid including those directly involved in murder in any future prisoner exchanges, with no exceptions. This policy would solve the problem without creating more dead martyrs around whose memory other terrorists would most assuredly rally.

A Cautionary Tale of Failed Deterrence

The incitement to further violence in Israel, however, is only part of the problem that Israel’s death penalty laws present. They also threaten to permanently mar what remains of Israel’s moral standing among the more than 70% of world nations that have abolished the death penalty in law and practice. In the highly volatile political climate that now imperils the rule of law in Israel, this issue further normalizes the invocation of state violence. It widens the gap between modern-day Israel and the central Jewish value of the inviolability of life. Famed death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel best articulated this stance when he said of capital punishment that – in the shadow of the Holocaust – “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

In light of Hamas’ recent threats, members of the Knesset and their constituents celebrating these death penalty laws would do well to consider the cautionary tale of the Israeli government’s longstanding policy of demolishing the family homes of terrorists after they have committed attacks. It is well known that this policy has done nothing to “deter” acts of violence and murder. Despite the government’s claims, terror attacks continue unabated. Home demolition is nothing more than an act of revenge and collective punishment that is in direct violation of international humanitarian law.

Proponents of Israel’s death penalty laws seem to have convinced themselves that adding the clear-cut human rights offense of the death penalty to the list of vengeful, medieval practices will do what home demolitions could not, and reduce terrorist attacks. This rationale constitutes a grave miscalculation, with potentially lethal consequences for Israel and all the Jewish world. For this reason alone, amidst many others, Israeli Supreme Court justices must redeem Israel this fate this Shavuot season by casting a resounding “No!” in response to the first of these death penalty laws now before them. They instead should unconditionally repeal this law, encouraging Israel to return to the civilized, abolitionist path, and to break the cycle of violence and killing, 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

Image: The Eitz Hayim - the Tree of Life - features as the centerpeice of the official logo of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” a group founded in 2020, with thousands of members in Israel and across the world.

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(Note: This article was published simultaneously in the Times of Israel.)

We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” across Israel and the world, lament the fact that the two barbaric execution-related bills that a majority of Knesset members have recently passed into law place Israel on a damning list of uncivilized, executing regimes across the globe. It is well known that over 70% of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Since Israel’s 1962 execution of Adolf Eichmann (which itself is futile to invoke to justify these laws), it has fallen into the latter category of abolitionist in practice. That reality is no more. Now that Israel’s first death penalty law has just taken effect, with the second soon to follow, executions will soon become a regular feature of Israeli life. Spectacles such as the recent celebration of Texas’s six hundredth execution of the modern era last week, while once unthinkable to many Israelis, will soon be mirrored across Jerusalem.

In 2025, a total of 17 nations globally carried out executions. A closer examination of some of this company Israel now keeps, since rekindling the flame of state-sponsored judicial killings, speaks volumes about the moral failure that the passage of these pieces of legislation represents. Through these new laws, Israel joins a cadre of notorious human rights violators like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Hamas, Yemen, and the USA, among others. The execution record of these pro-death countries speaks for itself, with Israel’s to follow.

China

Using the most recent available data from the last calendar year, just published in the Amnesty International Global Report: Death Penalty and Executions 2025, it is apparent that China once again topped the list of executors. The exact number of executions in China last year, like many before, remains unknown because the Chinese government classifies this data as a state secret. However, human rights organizations estimate that China executes thousands of people annually, which means it puts more people to death than the rest of the world combined. According to the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, the estimated number of executions has declined steadily in the twenty-first century, from 12,000 each year to 2,400. However, in 2022, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty announced that since 2007, at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China. Since 2006, the Chinese government has taken effective measures to limit the use of the death penalty, proclaiming that it is doing this to abolish it completely. Of note, Yemen, Vietnam, and North Korea, among others, also keep their execution tallies a secret.

Iran

Among nations that openly execute human beings, Iran often leads the world. In 2025, Iran executed at least 2,159 people—more than double the previous year’s total. This total represents the highest number of recorded executions in the country since 1989. The staggering surge accounts for the vast majority of a global spike in state-sanctioned killings, and has drawn severe condemnation from the United Nations and human rights organizations.

A renewed use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses and sweeping national security charges largely drove the massive increase. At least 795 people were executed for drug-related offenses, often following grossly unfair trials in Revolutionary Courts. Executions tied to politically motivated charges spiked significantly, with dozens executed under vague laws like “armed rebellion,” “corruption on earth,” and “enmity against God”. Ethnic minorities and migrants were disproportionately impacted. For example, at least 84 Afghan nationals were executed. Iranian authorities officially announced fewer than 7% of these executions. At least 11 executions were carried out in public spaces, often in front of crowds that included children.

Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen

Saudi Arabia, another country that welcomes the man-made Angel of Death that is capital punishment, has a grim execution record, executing 356 individuals over the course of 2025. The vast majority were drug-related convictions, although the kingdom also executed individuals for political dissent and crimes allegedly committed as juveniles, violating international laws.

Regarding Iraq, while figures are not yet fully available for 2025, authorities have determined that the state executed at least 63 people in 2024, nearly quadrupling the previous year’s total. The Iraqi government does not publish official statistics on capital punishment, but human rights organizations note that these figures are based on known and verified cases. The vast majority of those put to death were convicted on terrorism-related charges, often tied to former members of ISIS. A significant number of the known executions were carried out at Al-Hut prison in the city of Nasiriyah.

Execution tolls in Yemen are on a similar scale to Iraq. There were at least 51 recorded executions in Yemen in 2025, which represents an increase of more than a third from the at least 38 executions documented in 2024.

The United States, Hamas, Somalia, Singapore, Egypt, and Others

The increasingly autocratic United States carried out 47 executions in 2025, the highest number recorded in 16 years, driven largely by a high volume of death sentences in Florida and Texas, which, as previously mentioned, leads the nation with six hundred in the modern era.

The Gaza Strip came in just after the USA in 2025, when Hamas executed a total of 33 men. These individuals were primarily killed after being accused of collaborating with Israel or committing severe criminal offenses during the ceasefire period. Humanitarian organizations condemned these killings as extrajudicial executions.

According to the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), Somalia recorded at least 24 executions in 2025. This figure represents confirmed judicial executions— often handed down by military courts. However, the actual number may be higher, as local clan-based or summary executions also occur in certain regions outside of formal federal judicial oversight. (One can track annual global and regional trends by reviewing the full reports on the OHCHR Press Releases.)

Singapore also executed 17 individuals in 2025. This is the highest annual number of executions in the country since 2003. Of this total, 15 executions were for drug-related offenses, while the remaining cases involved murder. Kuwait carried out a total of 18 executions in 2025, which represents a significant increase compared to the 6 executions recorded in 2024.

At least 15 executions were documented in Egypt in 2025 across 10 different cases. Since Egyptian authorities do not publish official death penalty statistics, human rights organizations emphasize that these figures represent only the minimum number of executions that researchers were able to verify through families and media reports independently. Notably, Japan carried out one execution in 2025. This single execution—that of Takahiro Shiraishi (the “Twitter killer”)—took place on June 27, 2025. It ended a nearly three-year hiatus on capital punishment in the country.

South Sudan, Afghanistan, Oman, and Bangladesh also regularly appear on the annual list of executing nations.

Syria

Like China, Syria - a regular, frequent offender - also maintained no official or exact total number of judicial executions or extrajudicial killings in 2025. This is primarily due to the severe lack of independent monitoring, the highly fragmented control of the country, and the fact that most killings occurred outside of formal legal systems. Human rights organizations and the United Nations documented thousands of summary executions and sectarian-motivated killings throughout the year.

Notable localized incidents did unquestionably occur, however. Following insurgent attacks on government forces in early March 2025, coordinated counteroffensives by government-affiliated armed groups resulted in the execution of an estimated 1,400 to 1,500 people, primarily targeting the Alawite minority. Investigations by organizations like Human Rights Watch geolocated instances of mass executions, including at least 32 men killed in a single incident in al-Mukhtariya, Latakia. During clashes in the southern Sweida governorate, Amnesty International documented the deliberate extrajudicial executions of at least 46 members of the Druze minority by government personnel and affiliated forces on July 15 and 16, 2025. Furthermore, in late January 2025, fighters affiliated with the transitional government carried out 35 summary executions, primarily targeting former Assad-era officers. Due to industrial-scale detentions spanning the past decade and ongoing conflict, tens of thousands of individuals have been forcibly disappeared or executed in prisons over the years. However, exact, corroborated statistics for 2025 state-sanctioned and extrajudicial deaths remain unavailable.

Where Israel Falls on this list of Shame

It is impossible to know yet exactly where Israel will rank on this disgraceful list. One cannot be certain of just how many individuals Israel will put to death under the “Prosecution of Participants in the October 7 Massacre Events Law (5786–2026)” that recently passed in the Knesset. This law, combined with the racist, dangerous, vengeful, and unjust “Death Penalty for Terrorists” that the Knesset passed on March 30 of this year, inaugurates a new era of state-sponsored killings in Israel. The latest law focuses on the roughly 300-400 detainees from Gaza suspected of involvement in the horrific October 7th, 2023, attacks and who remain in Israeli custody without charge or trial, amid a documented policy of systemic torture. All of these prisoners could now become eligible for execution.

This latest law establishes a special military tribunal to adjudicate these Palestinians prisoners. It achieves this through a process that strips suspects of basic procedural protections essential to a fair trial and empowers the tribunal to impose the death penalty. This law places Israel in direct opposition to the international trend toward abolition and to binding obligations under international humanitarian law, including the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. Furthermore, this legislation strips suspects of basic procedural protections essential to a fair trial, rendering any death sentence imposed an arbitrary deprivation of life, absolutely prohibited under international law and potentially a war crime. The law also targets a specific, identifiable category of suspects, a form of personal legislation prohibited under both Israeli constitutional principles and international law.

If these laws were not monstrous enough, yesterday, the military commander of the occupied West Bank made it even worse with an order creating a more expansive application of the law, including against those convicted of killing to negate the authority of the military commander - in other words, resisting occupation.

The Death Penalty Places Israel on the Wrong Side of History

Any nation that engages in the blatant human rights violation that is capital punishment inherently fails the litmus test for a civilized society. Any version of capital punishment - whether in secret in China, for all to celebrate in Iran or Gaza, behind a sterilized needle in the USA, or now to further the “deterrence delusion” in Israel - is an abject abomination. The thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” have outlined time and again the multiple reasons for this well-deserved designation. First and foremost, rather than deterring acts of terrorism, the death penalty would instead incite and invite more shaheeds– martyrs – to attack Israel. The death penalty also violates the human right of life, always constitutes torture, risks executing the innocent, is racist in its application, and – from Adolph Hitler to Trump to National Security Minister Ben-Gvir – is used as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns. L’chaim has also illustrated how Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible, and how many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing, and lethal injection.

Now that the Knesset has enacted these medieval laws and the unconscionable stain of executions will succeed in darkening what remains of the moral fabric of Israeli society, antisemitic extremists will assuredly blame all Jews for their state’s sponsored murder program, neatly fitting it into their warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “Death Cult.” Just as these laws jeopardize the safety and security of Jews across the globe in this way, they also threaten to permanently mar what remains of Israel’s moral standing among the vast majority of nations that have abolished the death penalty in law and practice. In the highly volatile political climate that now imperils the rule of law in Israel, this issue further normalizes the invocation of state violence. It widens the gap between modern-day Israel and the central Jewish value of the inviolability of life.

Famed death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel best articulated L’chaim’s stance when he said of capital punishment that – in the shadow of the Holocaust – “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Proponents of these new laws in Israel should heed Wiesel’s message and realize that executions – still – are not the answer today, and never should be.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Image: The Eitz Hayim - the Tree of Life - features as the centerpeice of the official logo of "L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty," a group founded in 2020, with thousands of members in Israel and across the world.

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News broke today that the US government is seeking the death penalty for the suspect charged with killing two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington DC last year. The US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, on Friday filed a notice of intent to seek capital punishment for three out of 13 total charges against 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez. President Donald Trump has embraced the federal death penalty after his predecessor Joe Biden limited its use.

We - the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” - stand unequivocally against the seeking of the death penalty in this horrific case, as in response to any crime. The call for death penalty abolition allows for no exceptions. This includes the perpetrators of the deadly October 7th, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, the 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, and now the assailant in the case of this this lethal antisemitic attack.

The abominable recent new that the United States is seeking this medieval retributive punishment merits the republishing here of our article first published nearly a year ago in the Times of Israel on June 2, 2025 entitled “Jewish Opposition to Execution of DC Israeli Embassy Shooter.”

May it help to open and change hearts and minds.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

Board Certified Chaplain – Ohalah: Association of Rabbis and Cantors for Jewish Renewal

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

Advisory Committee Member – Death Penalty Action

_______________________________________________

Jewish Opposition to Execution of DC Israeli Embassy Shooter

We, the nearly 4,000 members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” call upon U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi not to pursue the death penalty for 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez for his murder of Israeli Embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. on May 21. We likewise firmly and unequivocally reject the letter signed by 15 (of the 120 total) members of the Israeli Knesset asking the U.S. government to pursue this barbaric form of “justice.”

Let there be no doubt: we are profoundly distressed by the blatantly antisemitic and terrorist attacks that Elias Rodriguez perpetrated. Our hearts and prayers extend to the beloved neshamot/souls of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim – Zichronam Livracha, of blessed memories. May their loved ones be comforted, and may their inspiring lives and abiding spirits be loving guides for us all now.

A death sentence for Mr. Rodriguez will only increase his platform for espousing hatred, making him a martyr to those who think like him, thus inspiring more violence. This reality is just one of the reasons we oppose the death penalty in all cases, but especially for killers with political motivations. Death by incarceration is a sentence that we know will hold him accountable and severely punish him for his heinous, shameless actions.

We follow the guidance of Holocaust survivor and death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel, who famously said about capital punishment: ‘Death is not the answer.’” By the end of his life, Wiesel expressed this unconditionally, clearly stating: “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.”

For members of L’chaim, this stance applies universally; there are no exceptions. It encompasses Nazi perpetrators such as Adolph Hitler and Adolph Eichmann, the Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7th, the infamous Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, the antisemitic murderers of Rabbi Zvi Kogan earlier this year in the United Arab Emirates, and, now, Elias Rodriguez in this awful case.

As with any murder, we never would claim to speak for victims’ loved ones. I have served as a hospital and community chaplain for years. I regularly counsel mourners that they should feel permission to experience the whole gamut of human emotion while grieving, including rage where appropriate and even the desire for vengeance where applicable. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position. If I ever were to lose a loved one to murder, I could very well find myself desiring — and perhaps even advocating for — the death of my loved one’s killer. A civilized society is responsible for protecting and honoring all such mourners while also upholding the most basic human rights upon which this world stands. Fundamental to these, of course, is the right to life itself. For this reason, 70% of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law and practice.

Let there be no doubt: traditional Jewish law allows for capital punishment, albeit with prodigious safeguards. Let us recall the words of some of the loftiest rabbinic voices: Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah, Rabbi Tarfon, and Rabbi Akiva, as found in the Talmud, Makkot 7a: “A Sanhedrin [Rabbinic court] that affects an execution once in seven years, is branded a destructive tribunal. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: once in 70 years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: Were we members of a Sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death. [Thereupon] Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel remarked: they would also multiply shedders of blood in Israel!” Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel and those supporting his view were citing the notion of deterrence and other now antiquated notions of “justice.” We certainly can forgive their misinformed opinions that reflected the understanding of their times, including when it comes to deterrence. These sages were not privy to modern meta-studies that have found no meaningful evidence that the use of the death penalty deters crime in any way. For this reason alone, most traditional Jewish arguments for the death penalty no longer apply in our world. Those above 15 Israeli MK signatories who asked US officials for “justice” in the form of state killings would do well to remember this fact.

But there is more that all Jews must realize in the wake of the Holocaust and the events of the 20th century.

Many of the members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” including this author, are direct descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors. We know more than most that capital punishment differs entirely from the Shoah. And yet, for many L’chaim members, the shadow of the Holocaust is inextricably linked to their rejection of the death penalty in all cases.

The most common form of execution used by the U.S. federal government and multiple states is lethal injection. Were the government to execute Elias Rodriguez today, it would be via this method, which is a direct Nazi legacy, first implemented by the Third Reich as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Dr. Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, devised that program. If this were not enough, across the USA, more and more states are erecting gas chambers, including one in Arizona that uses Zyklon B, the same lethal gas used in Auschwitz. Alabama and Louisiana already put their prisoners to death with nitrogen gas, with more states eager to follow their lead. No Jewish argument about the death penalty in the 21st century should ignore these proven, direct Nazi legacies against which the members of L’chaim! firmly repeat, “NEVER AGAIN to state-sponsored murder!” For these reasons and more, L’chaim members view the death penalty as one of the worst kinds of institutionalized evils that stain the United States, Israel, or any nation that seeks to employ it.

Rather than responding with more killing, we can and should honor the inspiring, peace-loving legacies of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky by making life-affirming decisions as we attempt to move forward. Among these should be choosing life by not executing Elias Rodriguez or anyone else. We must end the cycle of violence – not perpetuate it. And so, in the wake of this unspeakable tragedy, we again respond by chanting with mournful hearts and renewed vigor: “L’chaim – to Life!”

Caption: Headline of the June 5, 1962, New York Times article about Martin Buber’s objections to the execution of Nazi perpetrator Adolph Eichmann.

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The Knesset’s recent enactment of a law allowing for the execution of convicted terrorists on October 7, 2023, is an unmitigated disaster for Israel. It follows on the heels of another bill that the majority of members of that legislative body voted into law roughly one month prior, just in time to desecrate the celebration of Passover.  Many proponents of these laws have defended them by invoking Israel’s 1962 execution of Nazi mass murderer Adolph Eichmann. The thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” have explained time and again the futility of this comparison. 

We addressed this fallacy in detail in our essay entitled “The Futility of Invoking Nuremberg and Eichmann for Israel’s Death Penalty Bill,” published in the Times of Israel on Jan. 1, 2026. Given the scale and scope of the Eichmann comparisons proliferating now in the wake of these bills, we feel it appropriate to reprint that essay here, in the hope that it will open and change hearts and minds to the reality that Judaism in the twenty-first century demands abolition without exception.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

“What about Nuremberg and Eichmann?”

In the shadow of the Shoah, many death penalty debates in Jewish circles eventually arrive at this question. The thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” – of which this former Jewish prison chaplain is a co-founder – often encounter individuals who cite these two cases as evidence that there are indeed times when the death penalty is an appropriate response to monstrous actions. Now, as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s death penalty bill for convicted terrorists makes its rounds in the Knesset, many conversations throughout Israel and the Jewish world ultimately conjure these potent memories. Death penalty debates for perpetrators of the October 7, 2023, massacre – the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust – naturally strike this nerve,  triggering individual, collective, and intergenerational trauma.

The dialogue between death penalty bill proponents and detractors usually begins with supporters parroting the debunked myth of deterrence – that killing captured Hamas terrorists will save Israeli lives. This, of course, is patently false. Opponents of the bill respond to this lie by citing one of the manifold studies that proliferate disproving the deterrence fallacy, adding that executing convicted terrorists would only create more shaheeds (“martyrs”) among Israel’s enemies. Death penalty advocates often brush aside these facts. There are, however, those who can acknowledge this reality. Those individuals inevitably then pose the fateful question: “But what about Nuremberg and Eichmann?”

“Nuremberg” refers to the main Nuremberg Trial (International Military Tribunal), where death sentences led to the hangings of 10 high-ranking Nazis on October 16, 1946, with another scheduled (Hermann Göring) committing suicide. While the court sentenced 12 to death in total, Göring avoided execution, and the tribunal tried Martin Bormann in absentia, enabling him to escape hanging. The second reference is to Israel’s 1962 hanging of Nazi officer Otto Adolf Eichmann for his role as one of the primary architects of the Final Solution. Hannah Arendt covered Eichmann’s trial, during which she famously employed the term “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. Proponents of Israel’s death penalty bill today attempt to justify their position by equating perpetrators of the October 7, 2023, massacre with Eichmann and the Nazi mass murderers sentenced to death at Nuremberg. If we could rationalize it for the Third Reich, they argue, surely we can do so for Hamas terrorists, as well. The implication is that such “evil” demands execution, and – perhaps more on point – that there are instances when revenge through state killing is entirely appropriate.

For many L’chaim members like myself whose family members were Holocaust victims, this argument strikes a chord. Indeed, it is the very example of the Holocaust that undergirds much of the L’chaim members’ passion for death penalty abolition. I personally know how difficult it is to transcend the overwhelming longing for violent retaliation. I grew up as an ardent supporter of the death penalty, gripped in the spell of the same vengeful bloodlust that has plagued so many of my species. I therefore strive never to judge others who harbor such feelings, especially not when horrific antisemitic acts of terror, such as the mass murder and violence of October 7th, have victimized them. I hope that a brief review here of my own transformation over time might demonstrate the futility of invoking Nuremberg and Eichmann in the death penalty debate. Instead, I pray that it might help lead to a re-examination of beliefs about vengeful, retributive killings.

The Shadow of the Holocaust and a Jewish Prison Chaplain’s Change of Heart on the Death Penalty 

My change of heart regarding capital punishment took place over three decades, and it both began and ended with the Holocaust. Many of my childhood Passover Seders and Jewish/secular holiday gatherings were punctuated by my grandmother and her sister, of blessed memories, sharing details of their harrowing Shoah experiences. Their survival, and, by extension, my very existence, would not have been possible without the martyrdom of Mr. Michał Cegielski, a Polish Catholic man who hid them and other members of my family on his farm at the risk of death – a penalty he ultimately received. (My family and I attempted for decades to locate Mr. Cegielski’s whole identity, and now he is rightfully honored in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Israel.)

During my formative years, I believed firmly that anyone who had tormented and murdered my family members, or, for that matter, Mr. Cegielski, deserved to suffer and die. At times, I even felt that I would be prepared to tear them apart with my own bare hands – as painfully as possible – for what they did to my family and my people. The anger that intergenerational trauma had birthed decades before I entered the world was still palpable and powerful, instilling in my heart a nearly murderous rage. This feeling logically extended in my mind to any human being who committed such heinous acts as murder, and I imagined that many other family members of victims felt the same way I did. As I saw it, the Torah clearly endorsed my feelings with its famous declaration of “ayin takha ayin” – “an eye for an eye.” (Lev. 24: 19-21).

Not until my years of service as a Jewish prison chaplain in Canada did I seriously begin to explore the issue of state killings. I had sought out this unique pastoral care work after spending years visiting my former college roommate and friend, “Levi,” when he was incarcerated at Sing Sing and other notorious prisons across New York state. Previously, while in university with me, Levi had experienced a psychotic break, causing him to assault and nearly kill his mother violently. My visits with Levi over the years made me realize the need for spiritual support for the incarcerated, and exposed me for the first time to others in prisons who had indeed taken human lives.

In my newfound role as a prison chaplain in Canada, which had abolished the death penalty decades prior, I began to witness firsthand many profound examples of transformation in individuals whose vicious crimes might have qualified them for execution in the United States. I became well-acquainted with these men and women, who emerged not as monstrous and unfeeling murderers and rapists, but rather as complex human beings, not so different from my friend Levi – or even from myself. Among them were individuals who, after years of incarceration, showed sincere contrition, offered heartfelt apologies, and demonstrated fundamental behavioral change – a phenomenon that Judaism describes as teshuvah (repentance). Were these really the sort of people I previously envisioned tearing asunder as a righteous avenger?

These experiences created within my heart new conflicting feelings about capital punishment. They finally inspired me to take the time to learn the traditional Jewish understanding of the Biblical “eye for an eye.” I was shocked to discover that, in rabbinic parlance, this phrase referred to financial compensation for the value of those eyes. I learned that in its historical context, this lex talionis was intended to curtail, rather than augment, the collective bloodlust of expansive vengeful massacres that societies practiced in response to killings in ancient times – and still all too often today.

I also discovered the prodigious safeguards that rabbinic Judaism built into Jewish law to make the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out, lest an innocent person be executed. Simultaneously, I watched the televised saga of the execution of Troy Davis as it unfolded in Georgia in 2011, when the reality of the state killing of an innocent human being was laid bare before my eyes. The clarion call of the medieval sage Maimonides, who asserted that “it is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death,” began to reverberate in my soul. What, I rhetorically asked, would Maimonides make of the fact that – well before Eichmann – Israel had already failed this rabbinical barometer with the 1948 execution of innocent Israeli Defense Force officer Meir Tobianski, whom the Jewish State hanged and posthumously exonerated? I came to understand as well that the death penalty was racist in its origin and application, and that the notion of capital punishment as deterrence to any would-be murderers, which was a primary justification for keeping it at all in Talmudic parlance, had been disproven time and again.

Nazi Legacies and Abolition Without Exception

Still, some doubts lingered in my mind. What about the so-called “worst of the worst,” such as the Nazis and Hitler’s willing executioners, who had committed deadly acts of terror and killed members of my own family? Paradoxically, it took the shadow of the Holocaust itself to cast off my final misgivings for the light of abolition. In my ongoing study of capital punishment, I discovered to my horror that lethal injection – the primary form of execution used in the US – was a direct Nazi legacy. The Third Reich first implemented this execution method as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol, using lethal injection to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt, developed that protocol. I was appalled to learn that the kind of murderous hate that compelled the Nazis to inaugurate lethal injection in this world had overtaken my own spirit in my advocacy for death. The bloodlust that filled my heart effectively blinded me to the unconscionable Nazi legacy that I was unwittingly supporting. In this way, I had become living proof of Gandhi’s famous warning: “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” If this were not enough, I soon witnessed American states gassing prisoners to death with gas masks and chambers, with at least one state planning the use of Zyklon B, of Auschwitz infamy, to kill defenseless inmates against their will.

The long list of celebrated Jewish death penalty abolitionists includes many who lived during the Holocaust. Survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and philosopher Martin Buber both grasped the danger of giving the state the power to kill its prisoners long before I was born. As Wiesel professed: “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Wiesel even referred to Israel’s highly controversial 1962 execution of Eichmann as “an example not to be followed,” while Buber called it a great “mistake.” Other Holocaust survivors themselves, such as Nobel-prize-winning author Nelly Sachs, voiced strident opposition to Eichmann’s execution. Among the many notables who asked Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for Eichmann’s clemency were Samuel Hugo Bergmann, Nathan Rotenstreich, the poet Leah Goldberg, and members of the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University.

Realizing that these and other Jewish and non-Jewish human rights luminaries were fully aligned with the death penalty abolition cause made my change of heart complete. The Holocaust had morphed from one of my most significant rationalizations for the death penalty to one of the most critical reasons, as I saw it, to stand against state-sponsored murder in every single case, including for the Tree of Life synagogue shooter in recent years, and now for the perpetrators of the barbaric October 7, 2023, act of antisemitic terror and mass murder.

Principles Over Vengeance: The Example of Robert Badinter

Image: French Minister of Justice Robert Badinter (1928-2024) in 2013

Members of L’chaim and I continue to be galvanized by lofty examples of Jewish death penalty abolitionists born from the embers of the Holocaust, as we chant “Never Again!” to state-sponsored murder. One such eminent figure who rightfully received global attention upon his passing in 2024 was the former French Minister of Justice, Robert Badinter, of blessed memory. The Holocaust experience of Badinter’s family was punctuated by the unfathomable murder of his father, Simon Badinter, in the Sobibor concentration camp in 1943. Emboldened by this killing and the lessons of the unparalleled conflagration of the Shoah, Badinter went on in his illustrious legal and political career to successfully advocate for the ultimate abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. A tribute celebrating his accomplishments poignantly described that when Badinter was confronted with Klaus Barbie, the Nazi who had arrested and sent his father to his death, he proudly “stood by his opposition to the death penalty and did not wish nor seek to have his father’s killer executed. He thereby demonstrated a rare willingness to place principle over the powerful personal desire to avenge the brutal death of a beloved parent.” Badinter’s laudable attitude was reminiscent of the late Eva Mozes Kor, founder of the Candles Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, and champion of Holocaust education and the power of forgiveness.

Like Badinter, Kor, and countless family members of murder victims, I, too, have managed in my own way over time to overcome the bloodlust that had been growing like a cancer within me since before my birth. As a result, I firmly believe that others can do the same. People are capable of change, including those who have vengeance deeply rooted in their hearts, as I once did. As the Knesset decides the fate of convicted October 7th terrorists, the time is now for Israelis and Jews everywhere to unveil the trauma-laden, insidious revenge impulse that drives this death penalty bill, releasing it at last from behind its mask of false notions of deterrence. Only then will the cycle of violence and killing truly have a chance at ending. Only then can true restorative justice and reconciliation begin.

Image: The Eitz Hayim - the Tree of Life - features as the centerpeice of the official logo of "L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty," a group founded in 2020, with thousands of members in Israel and across the world.

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By the end of his life, Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate and staunch death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel famously said of capital punishment: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” from across Israel and and the world stand with him and all of civilized humanity now in categorically condemning the “Prosecution of Participants in the October 7 Massacre Events Law (5786–2026)” that passed into law in the Knesset today after a unanimous 93-0 vote. (Of note, those members of the Knesset disgusted by the bill left the chamber ahead of the vote in protest.) We unequivocally oppose this law’s insidious fixation with vengeful killing. Instead, we support the victims of the October 7th acts of terror by siding with restorative justice – and life.

Israel’s “Punitive and Retributive Spectacle” Contradicts Jewish Life-Affirming Blessings

Israel’s barbaric new law establishes a special military tribunal to adjudicate Palestinians held in Israeli custody on suspicion of participation in the heinous Hamas-led terror attacks of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent hostage-holding in Gaza. It achieves this through a process that strips suspects of basic procedural protections essential to a fair trial and empowers the tribunal to impose the death penalty. Alongside the new Death Penalty Law that entered into force just in time to desecrate the start of Passover on March 30, 2026, this law places Israel in direct opposition to the international trend toward abolition and to binding obligations under international humanitarian law, including the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. Furthermore, this legislation strips suspects of basic procedural protections essential to a fair trial, rendering any death sentence imposed an arbitrary deprivation of life, absolutely prohibited under international law and potentially a war crime. The law also targets a specific, identifiable category of suspects, a form of personal legislation prohibited under both Israeli constitutional principles and international law. The law focuses on the roughly 300-400 detainees from Gaza suspected of involvement in the October 7th attacks and who remain in Israeli custody without charge or trial, amid a documented policy of systemic torture.

It so happens that the Knesset passed this veritable shanda (shame) the week before Rosh Chodesh Sivan (the new month of Sivan) in the Hebrew calendar. While this may seem irrelevant, a closer look at the wisdom of Jewish liturgy would teach otherwise. As an ordained cantor, in addition to being the co-founder of L’chaim, I am keenly aware of the liturgy that accompanies the end of the week before any Rosh Chodesh (new month). The central prayer at this liminal juncture is the Blessing of the New Month (Birchat Hachodesh). I will be reciting this very prayer once again this Shabbat for my home congregation. This short blessing invokes the word “Chaim” - “Life” - no less than twelve times as the congregation prays for all that is life-sustaining to come to fruition in the coming weeks. It reflects Judaism’s millennial arc of affirming life, a fact that renowned Orthodox Rabbi Yitz Greenberg eloquently affirmed in his anti-death-penalty op-ed in the Jerusalem Post earlier this year. (It is precisely for this reason that we named our Jewish death penalty abolitionist group “L’chaim” at our founding in 2020.)

Image: The opening of Birchat HaChodesh, the Blessing of the New Month, to be recited this Shabbat, May 16.

Most observant Jews like Rabbi Greenberg will be reciting this prayer across Israel and the world this upcoming Shabbat, Saturday, May 16. They will do so now against the backdrop of this Knesset-approved invitation for serving death throughout Israel in the coming months and years. It so happens that I will be reciting this prayer on my own 45th birthday, which falls on this Shabbat. It is a birthday that I am honoured to share with my elder Rabbi Greenberg, whose wisdom I greatly respect. I will be reflecting on my own celebration of life on this occasion, and - while I certainly cannot speak for Rabbi Greenberg - perhaps he shall be doing the same.

Israeli Minister of National Security Ithamar Ben Gvir, on the other hand, will most certainly not. A primary architect of and advocate for Israel’s new death penalty laws, Ben Gvir also claims to be an observant Jew, and as such, likely will be listening to the same blessing of the month in his home shul (synagogue) this Shabbat. As he does so, he assuredly will willfully ignore or rationalize this invocation’s repeated pleas for life, instead gloating over this law’s latest fulfillment of his recent 50th birthday’s death-wish and macabre execution fantasies, symbolized by the noose-laden cake that his wife Ayala presented to him.

Ahead of the passing of this latest legal abomination, various Israeli human rights groups released a statement listing their grave concerns over the bill. Their conclusion is most poignant and bears repeating in full here:

“The Tribunal bill allows for the death penalty for Palestinians under substandard judicial proceedings. By empowering procedurally deficient, military-controlled courts to impose the death penalty on a specific, identifiable group of suspects, live-streaming proceedings before any guilt is established, and permitting convictions based on evidence obtained through torture, the bill subordinates every principle of fair criminal justice to a punitive and retributive spectacle. It violates the right to life, the prohibition on cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, the presumption of innocence, and the foundational guarantees of judicial independence and due process under both Israeli constitutional law and binding international law. Justice for the victims of October 7 is a legitimate and urgent imperative. Those individuals responsible for grave atrocities must be held accountable. However, accountability must be pursued through a process that includes rather than abandons the principles of justice. It must be pursued through fair trials, in which the prosecution must prove its case, defendants have a meaningful right to defend themselves, and no one is put to death.”

We, the members of L’chaim, could not agree more. We would add to this statement words that Wiesel offered upon the subject of the death penalty for a 1989 recording he made with other death penalty abolitionists entitled Lighting the Torch of Conscience, in which he stated the following:

“Death should be opposed, not served. I have seen too much death in my life. I have met too many people who served death in my life…

There is no reason in the world why death should be imposed by people of good will, of intelligence, of kindness – people in the name of justice – on other people. Those who sinned – those who committed crimes – can be punished in other ways, but not with death. When we impose death on others, we are doing something to ourselves…

With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms…

I belong to a tradition – a Jewish tradition – that says that when a Sanhedrin in ancient times pronounced one death sentence in its entire tenure, that Sanhedrin – that Supreme Court – was called murderous.”

It is not difficult to discern from Wiesel’s stated position how he would respond to the notion that the modern Israeli government might execute not one, but potentially hundreds of convicted terrorists.

Standing with all Victims while Supporting the Jewish Value of Life

Let there be no doubt, whether ahead of the new month’s life-affirming blessing or any day, the thousands of L’chaim members would stand united against this medieval law. It should be obvious that our position does not mean that we stand against the victims of the horrors of October 7th. Tragically, individuals misinterpret our opposition to this law, repeatedly calling us “Kapos” for being against the death penalty. Their accusations, however vile, often stem from an understandable visceral emotional response to the horrors that were reaped upon Israel on October 7th, triggering the singular intergenerational collective trauma of the Holocaust, in which the ancestors of many L’chaim members like myself were systematically murdered on a scale that the world has never before seen.

These critics’ recriminations demonstrate that there is indeed a need to clearly state that L’chaim members firmly stand with the October 7th victims in the hope of creating a safe, secure, and peaceful Israel, and working toward restorative justice for the perpetrators who so heinously murdered their loved ones and traumatized them. Our approach very much applies even to October 7th family members like former Gaza hostage Eliya Cohen, who asserted that hostages should be given “the honor of pressing the button” to carry out death penalties for Hamas terrorists. Mr. Cohen wrote on Instagram, “Raping, murdering, smashing heads, desecrating bodies, burning babies, kidnapping civilians, and torturing them 24/7, is that not a violation of the international convention?” Mr. Cohen has every right in the world to feel this way, and no one should judge him, nor any direct or indirect victims, for this opinion. The “civilized” society to which Wiesel referred in his abolitionist stance can – and must – indeed honor and support these victims without succumbing to the vengeful collective urge to execute, which of course would only further endanger Israel and Jews across the world.

The Jewish world indeed changed forever with the monstrous Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023. The unjustifiable terror unleashed on that day – born of Hamas’ foundational mandate to destroy Israel –undoubtedly was an act of unmitigated horror. In what constituted the worst assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 815 civilians, and captured 251 hostages, many of whom eventually died in unfathomable, grotesque conditions in tunnels underneath Gaza.

The unfathomable scale and scope of this atrocity led to a redoubling of L’chaim’s mission to uplift the Jewish value of life. In the immediate months following October 7th, L’chaim marched for the safe return of the hostages, carrying posters emphasizing Judaism’s central tenet of reverence for all life. This action reflected L’chaim’s life-affirming approach to protesting every execution that takes place in the United States and the world. For each American state killing event, L’chaim members gather to recite traditional mourning prayers for the victims of the crimes that led to the death sentence being meted out, offering kavanot/prayerful intentions as well for their loved ones in mourning. Members then also chant prayers for the condemned men and women that the state is putting to death for those same crimes, creating new victims in the insane cycle of violence. In the case of the infamous October 27, 2018, Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting, L’chaim members followed this model by publicly intoning the Eil Malei Rachamim traditional Jewish memorial prayer for the eleven martyrs killed that fateful day as part of an anti-death penalty protest at the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Guided by Wiesel’s foundational principle of affirming the value of life, L’chaim’s intentionally absolutist approach to capital punishment has always included convicted Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the October 7th attack. Members, therefore, deplore Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s moral regression of seeking to resurrect executions in the Jewish state, aiming to put to death those guilty of October 7th’s carnage and other terrorist acts. Doing so would only give ammunition for those who seek to equate the Netanyahu regime with the terrorism of Hamas, whose members continue to employ executions regularly across Gaza. The net result of such a policy would be to increase already rising incidents of antisemitic violence across the world. Far from “deterring” would-be terrorists, the threat of a death penalty would only incite and invite further shaheeds seeking martyrdom.

Just as L’chaim members never deigned to speak for the eleven Tree of Life victims while advocating against the death penalty for Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, so, too, we would never attempt to do so for victims of the unimaginable terror that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th. As a chaplain, I regularly counsel mourners that, when they grieve, they should allow themselves to experience the full range of human emotions, including rage and, where applicable, the desire for vengeance. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position. If I myself were to lose a loved one to murder, I, too, might find myself advocating for the death of my loved one’s killers. Humanity has a collective responsibility to protect and honor all such mourners, while also upholding the fundamental human rights upon which the world stands. Most basic to these liberties is the right to life. This mandate is one of the reasons why more than 70% of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.

An Invitation to join L’chaim’s Chorus

A longstanding anti-death penalty slogan asks: “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” This paradoxical question has plagued the human condition since time immemorial, during periods of both war and peace. In response, L’chaim stands with rabbinic sages like Rabbis Tarfon, Akiva, and Maimonides, and modern Jewish human rights and philosophy icons Elie Wiesel and Martin Buber – along with countless historical and contemporary voices of reason – in disavowing the penalty of death “in all forms,” replacing these avenues of killing with the proverbial Tree of Life. Like the Blessing of the New Month, Jewish liturgy often highlights and reiterates the exclamation of the author of the Book of Proverbs that “she is a Tree of Life to those who grasp her.” (3: 18) May humanity, for the sake of its survival, choose never to let go of that tree’s branches.

Even this L’chaim co-founder once supported the death penalty. It was my role as a Jewish prison chaplain that helped ledd me to see the error of my ways. May the citizens of Israel who today support this law’s celebration of death soon experience the same transformation. As I did for my views, may they make collective teshuvah (repentance) for allowing this monstrous law to take effect. And may they begin to work now for its unconditional repeal. In doing so, they will one day join L’chaim and civilized humanity’s resounding chorus - this Rosh Chodesh, and always - chanting: “To Life!”

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Images: Screenshots from Minister of National Security Ithamar Ben Gvir’s TikTok video, featuring his death penalty dream sequence. 

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Last week, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir once again provoked global recriminations when he posted an AI-generated TikTok video declaring he 'dreams' of nooses, celebrating a law that mandates death by hanging exclusively for Palestinian detainees. Co-opting a viral social media audio trend, Ben Gvir posted the video to his TikTok account on 4 May 2026, using the viral 'I know I should sleep, but the voices in my head go…,” followed by an upbeat audio trend as its soundtrack. The footage consists entirely of AI-generated imagery: everyday objects, rendered in artificial detail, morphed into the shapes of gallows and hanging ropes. Text overlaid on the video declared that he dreams of the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners, using slang in Hebrew that translates directly to 'I am dying to execute the terrorists.' 

The clip spread rapidly across platforms, with commenters across the political spectrum expressing disbelief that a sitting government minister had produced and published such content. Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi responded directly, stating that Ben Gvir and his wife 'need a psychiatrist immediately,' adding: 'Usually, people wish for a better future and love with a birthday cake, but these people sanctify hatred and death.' Social media reactions ranged from accusations of incitement to calls for international legal accountability. One widely shared post read: 'This is not normal behaviour; who dreams of killing people?’'

The TikTok video did not arrive without context. Just weeks earlier, on 18 March 2026, Ben Gvir had posted a separate, now deleted, video to X, standing in front of a visible gallows to deny rumours of his death, stating in Hebrew: 'I am dead with longing to execute the terrorists. Death penalty for terrorists now!' The terrorist organization Hamas described that post as 'public incitement to killing'. It warned of repercussions, calling Ben Gvir's repeated glorification of execution 'an extremist mentality' and demanding urgent international action to protect Palestinian detainees from what it called a policy of state killing.

We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” from Israel and across the world, unequivocally condemn this latest display of the grotesque celebration of death and killing associated with Israel’s recently passed “Death Penalty for Terrorists” Law. Ben Gvir’s nightmarish dream sequence constitutes but the most recent example of how this law opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of death. The video arrived just two days after Ben Gvir's 50th birthday party, where his wife Ayala presented him with a cake topped with a golden noose and the inscription 'Congratulations Minister Ben Gvir, sometimes dreams come true.'

As Linda Dayan of Haaretz has rightfully argued, these kinds of charades are undoubtedly political maneuvers by Ben Gvir to grab headlines, even if as a target of loathing. In doing so, however, he continues to play with fire. His noose-laden dream and birthday cake are but the latest iterations of many similar ploys since the start of his death campaign. Taken together, they reveal just how dangerously far the Far Right has moved the needle of reason and respect for human rights in Israel.

Such debauched spectacles normally would not merit a response. Tragically, the level of bloodlust that permeates the present zeitgeist and the fact that this law has indeed come to fruition - while the Knesset now considers passing a second death penalty bill - necessitate our doing just that. Not to counter such displays would risk further normalizing them.

Ben Gvir’s Pre-Passover “To Death” Toast

An egregious previous example of this horrific kind of political theatre occurred on March 30, 2026, just before Passover, the most widely observed Jewish holiday. It was then that Ben Gvir celebrated the passing of his pet racist, dangerous, vengeful, and unjust death penalty law by raising a champagne bottle and drinking to victory. The customary toast in Jewish tradition, of course, is to exclaim “L’chaim!”, meaning “to Life!” Partly for this reason, the name chosen for the Jewish anti-death penalty group that now includes thousands of members in Israel and abroad is “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Those MKs (Members of the Knesset) who support this law have upended the phrase meant to evoke Judaism’s core life-affirming principles.

While Ben Gvir claims to be a pious and observant Jew, his actions once again reveal his blatant disregard for Jewish values and mockery of Jewish ritual symbolism. He might as well have screamed “Lamavet” (“To Death”) for his celebratory toast. Make no mistake: the passage of this death penalty law will certainly bring death for both convicted terrorists and innocent Israelis and Jews across the world. It is an abject abomination that will prove disastrous, for multiple reasons. Among these, perhaps one of the most insidious is the fact that so many individuals the world over will now associate Ben Gvir’s yarmulke-covered physiognomy with Jews everyone, concluding that we all share his death-wish. 

MK Limor Son Har-Melech’s Death Penalty Purim Costume

The manner in which Ben Gvir and his wife chose to celebrate his birthday with a baked centerpiece of death calls to mind how another member of the Knesset chose to dress for the festive holiday Purim earlier this year. MK Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit) had herself photographed in the costume of what one Haaretz commentator has appropriately dubbed a “Death Eater” (of Harry Potter infamy) in the service of the state. The Israeli lawmaker was dressed in an Israel Prison Service jumpsuit, with a noose in one hand and a syringe of poison in the other. Next to her, in a white dress shirt, was her husband, Yehuda, packing an automatic rifle in what very well may have been an homage to the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein and wearing signs reading “expulsion,” “conquest,” and “settlement.” Indeed, if one such “Death Eater” were not enough for the aforementioned commentator, Ben Gvir’s symbolic eating of death for his birthday certainly would take the cake.)

Leaving aside the dangerous implications of Yehuda’s chosen garb, it behooves L’chaim to unpack the costume choice of the Member of Knesset. Her wardrobe selection was far worse than a fashion faux pas. Her shameless action celebrated lethal symbols, one of which – lethal injection – is an unquestionable and unconscionable direct Nazi legacy. Ben Gvir has often suggested this so-called “Nazi needle” as a means for state killing. This abject abomination represents the kind of legacy that any such death penalty bill would perpetuate.

MK Son Har-Melech’s costume, like Ben Gvir’s dream montage, birthday cake and his continuous wearing of a noose-shaped lapel to Knesset hearings and elsewhere in public, glorifies killing and sanctifies revenge in a manner that is not befitting of any civilized society.

The Death Penalty Brings out the “Worst of the Worst” in Humanity

Many supporters claim that society reserves capital punishment for  “the worst of the worst,” a patently false notion. The only “worst of the worst” that applies concerning lex talionis is the reality that the prospect of executions brings out the darkest aspects of human nature in all those who crave it: vengeance, bloodlust, the desire to inflict pain, suffering, and death. The man-made Angel of Death that is capital punishment inevitably carries each of these in spades. Ben Gvir’s macabre dream, birthday cake, and noose lapel pin, like MK Son Har-Melech’s deplorable Purim behavior and post, underscore this tragic truth. They unveil the vengeful intention that lies at the heart of the death penalty law that now goes before the Israeli Supreme Court for review, and the second bill now before the Knesset.

Before brandishing such gruesome symbols as a noose and a syringe on these celebratory occasions, Ben Gvir and Son Har-Melech might have taken a moment to realize the full, perilous implications of readers treating Purim’s Book of Esther as a literal guide for living in the twenty-first century. The example of Baruch Goldstein and brutal execution regimes like Iran reinforce this reality. L’chaim highlighted this juxtaposition in a post entitled Haman and his 10 Sons: 11 Reasons to Oppose Israel’s Death Penalty this Purim. We outlined the truths about Israel’s death penalty bill in that essay, and we reiterate them here.

The death penalty will increase – not decrease – terrorist attacks in Israel, creating more murders and martyrs (shahids), and endangering Jews worldwide. It risks executing the innocent. Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. Like tasteless Purim masks, terms like “deterrence,” which is a fallacious delusion when applied to the death penalty,  and “retributive” or “proportional” justice are veils for vengeance, which does not bring closure for murder victims’ loved ones. The death penalty is racist. It often results inphysical 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 death penalty will traumatize the Israel Prison Service executioners. From Adolph Hitler to Donald Trump and now Ithamar Ben Gvir, the death penalty is used as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns. And, last but far from least, it violates the human right to life.

Instead of celebrating death, we ask readers to recall the words of Elie Wiesel, whose views encapsulate the stance of L’chaim’s members. When questioned about his feelings on capital punishment, Wiesel resolutely stated, “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” By the end of his life, Wiesel publicly said that he made no exception to this rule, stating: “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.”

Twenty-first-century Judaism must hold by the red line that Wiesel set forth. It cannot mirror Hamas, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and others by violating its moral obligations and ethical standards and engaging in state-sponsored killings of defenseless prisoners. With Wiesel’s neshama in mind and heart, and on behalf of all L’chaim members, we respectfully implore Israel to join civilized humanity and abolish the death penalty once and for all. The first steps toward doing so are the Israeli Supreme Court unconditionally repealing the abject abomination that is Israel’s new death penalty law, and the Knesset rejecting the second death penalty bill now before it. 

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Image: People celebrate Lag B’Omer near a bonfire, in Kiryat Sefer, Israel on May 22, 2019. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

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Note: This article was published in its original form in the Times of Israel on May 6, 2026.

The Knesset’s obsession with the death penalty in Israel once again collided with the Jewish liturgical calendar in yet another telling synchronicity, highlighting how that legislative body has upended the Jewish value of life. Many in Israel and the Jewish world were shocked last month when Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir celebrated the passage of his “Death Penalty for Terrorist” law with a champagne toast just ahead of Passover, effectively desecrating that sacred holiday’s observance. The unfolding impact of that macabre development in turn defiled the subsequent commemoration of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), just as it violated Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day), and betrayed the core Jewish values celebrated on Yom Haatzmaut (Independence Day) later that month. As if on cue, earlier this week, just ahead of the festive Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, the Knesset publicly released details of a second death penalty bill detailing its plans to establish military tribunals with the authority to put to death convicted terrorists who helped carry out the horrific October 7th, 2023, massacre in Israel. Once again, the dark shadow of capital punishment eclipsed any light and joy cast by Jewish life and values, with the totality of that eclipse bringing only suffering and death. We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in Israel and across the world, stand against this insidious fixation with vengeful killing. Instead, we support the victims of the October 7th acts of terror by siding with restorative justice - and life.

The Uplifting of Death as the Antithesis of Lag Ba’Omer’s Joy

The traditional Jewish ritual of Sefirah, or counting the omer, begins on the second day of Passover. It marks the ancient practice of presenting an omer – an offering of the new barley crop – at the Temple. It lasts for forty-nine days (seven weeks) until Shavuot, the “Feast of Weeks” festival that commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. The enumerating of days connects the national Jewish redemption story of Passover’s Exodus narrative to the idea of collective revelation that Shavuot underscores.

This season of “Counting the Omer” also constitutes a seven-week mourning period associated with various calamities in the Jewish calendar, notably a plague that killed upwards of 24,000 students of the famed rabbinic sage Akiva ben Yoseif (50 -135 CE). The period is associated with various massacres recorded in Jewish history that tradition teaches occurred in these spring months, beginning with the execution and martyrdom of the same Rabbi Akiva and his students at the hands of the Romans, and continuing through targeted attacks on Jewish communities during the three Crusades (1096-1192). To memorialize these awful events, many Jews across the world refrain from participation in celebrations during this time span. According to the Code of Jewish Law in Orakh Hayim 493:2, no weddings should take place, and even cutting one’s hair is prohibited during the Sefirah, reflecting similar Jewish practices during periods of mourning.

In years past, the members of “L’chaim!” have juxtaposed the Omer period’s counting of days with the psychological torture of our condemned pen pals (Jewish and non), who have been forced to count down their final days ahead of Shavuot executions in the United States. This year presents another awful parallel between the Omer and the death penalty. That correlation centers on the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Omer that falls in the middle of this countdown.

Lag Ba’Omer is a festive day occurring on the 33rd day of this Omer count (May 5-6, 2026), breaking the forty-nine-day mourning period between Passover and Shavuot. Tradition holds that the aforementioned plague halted on this date. This festive day also marks the passing of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (90-160 CE), the renowned author of the Zohar (the foundational text of Kabbalah). Bar Yochai’s passing is considered a day of joy rather than sadness, as he was said to have revealed deep mystical secrets on that day. Others link Lag Ba’Omer to the date of the start of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Roman Empire, celebrating Jewish resistance. Joy is the overwhelming feature of this day, contrasting with the surrounding somber weeks of the Sefirah. Jews in Israel and around the world celebrate the day with kumsitzim (bonfires) associated with Jewish resistance, joyful songs and music, picnics, weddings, playing with bows and arrows, haircuts for young children, and visits to the burial site of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meron, Israel.

It was just ahead of this consummate day of joy in the Jewish calendar that the Knesset unveiled its plans for state killing via military tribunal. Whether intentional or not, the timing of this revelation inextricably links the death penalty, which Holocaust survivor and staunch abolitionist Elie Wiesel appropriately dubbed the manmade “Angel of Death,” with the joyful celebrations of Lag Ba’Omer. Like Ben Gvir’s recent, abominable noose-decorated birthday cake topped with the message for him that “sometimes dreams do come true,” the optics of this timing sends the message to the world that Judaism celebrates death, feeding the antisemitic canard that it is a “Death Cult.”

Supporting the Jewish Value of Life with Unequivocal Opposition to Israel’s Second Death Penalty Bill

Let there be no doubt: the members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in Israel and across the world stand united against this latest proposed military tribunal bill that allows for the execution of the perpetrators of the October 7th, 2023, mass murder in Israel. We would hold this position on any day in the Jewish calendar. When days of life-affirming joy such as Lag Ba’Omer are debased and devalued by developments like the advancement of this bill, we have a responsibility and an obligation to highlight this meaningful alignment and remind the world why we stand against capital punishment in all cases, and we’re day.

Our position does not mean that we stand against the victims of the horrors of October 7th. On the contrary, we stand with these victims in the hope of creating a safe, secure, and peaceful Israel, and working toward restorative justice for the perpetrators who so heinously murdered their loved ones and traumatized them. Our approach very much applies even to October 7th family members like former Gaza hostage Eliya Cohen, who asserted that hostages should be given “the honor of pressing the button” to carry out death penalties for Hamas terrorists. Mr. Cohen wrote on Instagram, “Raping, murdering, smashing heads, desecrating bodies, burning babies, kidnapping civilians, and torturing them 24/7, is that not a violation of the international convention?” Mr. Cohen has every right in the world to feel this way, and no one should judge him, nor any direct or indirect victims, for this opinion. A civilized society can – and must – indeed honor and support these victims without succumbing to the vengeful collective urge to execute, which would only further endanger Israel and Jews across the world.

The Jewish world changed forever with the monstrous Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2013. The unjustifiable terror unleashed on that day – born of Hamas’ foundational mandate to destroy Israel –undoubtedly was an act of unmitigated horror. In what constituted the worst assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 815 civilians, and captured 251 hostages, many of whom eventually died in unfathomable, grotesque conditions in tunnels underneath Gaza.

This unmitigated atrocity and hostage crisis led to a redoubling of L’chaim’s mission to uplift the Jewish value of life. In the immediate months following October 7th, L’chaim marched for the safe return of the hostages, carrying posters emphasizing Judaism’s central tenet of reverence for all life. This action reflected L’chaim’s life-affirming approach to protesting every execution that takes place in the United States and the world. For each American state killing event, L’chaim members gather to recite traditional mourning prayers for the victims of the crimes that led to the death sentence being meted out, offering kavanot/prayerful intentions as well for their loved ones in mourning. Members then also chant prayers for the condemned men and women that the state is putting to death for those same crimes, creating new victims in the insane cycle of violence. In the case of the infamous October 27, 2018, Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting, L’chaim members followed this model by publicly intoning the Eil Malei Rachamim traditional Jewish memorial prayer for the eleven martyrs killed that fateful day as part of an anti-death penalty protest at the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Guided by this foundational principle of affirming the value of life, L’chaim’s intentionally absolutist approach to capital punishment has always included convicted Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the October 7th attack. Members, therefore, deplore Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s recent moral regression of seeking to resurrect executions in the Jewish state, aiming to put to death those guilty of October 7th’s carnage and other terrorist acts. Doing so would only give ammunition for those who seek to equate the Netanyahu regime with the terrorism of Hamas, whose members continue to employ executions regularly across Gaza. The net result of such a policy would be to increase already rising incidents of antisemitic violence across the world. Far from “deterring” would-be terrorists, the threat of a death penalty would only incite and invite further shaheeds seeking martyrdom.

Just as L’chaim members never deigned to speak for the eleven Tree of Life victims while advocating against the death penalty for Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, so, too, we would never attempt to do so for victims of the unimaginable terror that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th. As a chaplain, I regularly counsel mourners that, when they grieve, they should allow themselves to experience the full range of human emotions, including rage and, where applicable, the desire for vengeance. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position. If I myself were to lose a loved one to murder, I, too, might find myself advocating for the death of my loved one’s killers. A civilized society has a responsibility to protect and honor all such mourners, while also upholding the fundamental human rights upon which the world stands. Most basic to these liberties is the right to life. This mandate is one of the reasons why more than 70%of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.

Lessons from the Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting

Israel would do well now to follow the example of the inspiring Jewish community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In a profound example of that group’s unflagging steel resolve, it hosted a life-affirming parade to celebrate the dedication of a new Torah – known also as an Eitz Chayim (”Tree of Life”) – in loving memory of Joyce Fienberg, Z’L, one of the eleven Tree of Life martyrs, and her late husband, Dr. Steven Fienberg, Z’L. That sacred gathering brought new life to the exhortation that has motivated Jewish people for millennia: “Am Yisrael Chai” – “The People of Israel Live!” To this profound demonstration of the very best of Jewish values and resilience, the resounding response of the thousands of members of L’chaim was—and remains—to chant “L’chaim – to Life!”

To honor the victims of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue attack, L’chaim provides annual donations to the Cecil and David Rosenthal Memorial Fund, created in memory of the eponymous brothers who were Tree of Life victims. L’chaim also created a new logo featuring the Eitz Chayim – Tree of Life – itself. That image serves as a reminder of L’chaim’s mission to extend the symbolic ethical roots of that tree of collective wisdom and morality to all human beings who are at risk of state killing, including now the perpetrators of the murderous October 7th antisemitic attack of terror. Indeed, it calls upon the world to reaffirm the sanctity of life.

A longstanding anti-death penalty slogan asks: “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” This paradoxical question has plagued the human condition since time immemorial, during periods of both war and peace. In response, L’chaim stands with rabbinic sages like Rabbis Tarfon, Akiva, and Maimonides, and modern Jewish human rights and philosophy icons Elie Wiesel and Martin Buber – along with countless historical and contemporary voices of reason – in disavowing the penalty of death “in all forms,” replacing these avenues of killing with the proverbial Tree of Life. Jewish liturgy often highlights and reiterates the exclamation of the author of the Book of Proverbs that “she is a Tree of Life to those who grasp her.” (3: 18) May humanity, for the sake of its survival, choose never to let go of that tree’s branches, and may the members of the Knesset firmly grasp hold of it now as they vote with a resounding “no” to Israel’s latest bill of death.

Dangerous Excesses Remind the Fires of Extremism on Lag Ba’Omer

Lag Ba’Omer festivities have become dangerously excessive over the years. The annual pilgrimage to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s grave at Mount Meron in northern Israel has proven catastrophic. On April 30, 2021, during the annual Lag Ba’Omer festival at that location, one of the deadliest civilian disasters in the country’s history occurred when 45 people were killed, and approximately 150 were injured during a crowd crush that resulted from an excessively overcapacity crowd of nearly 100,00 worshippers. One cannot help but consider the unintended impact of these excesses of revelry when reflecting on death penalty proponents like Ben Gvir, who sickeningly celebrate state killings, and the cycle of violence and killings that they are perpetuating.

In like manner, Israel’s Fire and Rescue once again this year urged Lag Ba’Omer revelers to limit the scale and scope of their festive bonfires and to “celebrate responsibly,” given the history of hazard to people and the environment that fires have posed in previous years’ observance of the holiday. These bonfires can burn out of control all too easily, replacing joy with carnage. They offer a fitting symbol for the Knesset’s ongoing playing with the fire of state-sponsored killing. As human history demonstrates time and again, the opening of the Pandora’s Box that is the death penalty indeed constitutes one of the most telling examples of the danger of fanning the flames of extremism, in any form. May all Israelis realize the danger of the fiery passion for vengeance that this latest death penalty represents - before the unchecked impact of that flame engulfs Jews everywhere.

Cantor Michael Zoosman

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

Advisory Board Member: Death Penalty Action

Left: A large birthday cake featuring a golden noose and guns is presented to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at his 50th birthday party, on May 2, 2026. Right: Ayala Ben Gvir gives her husband a second, smaller birthday cake, also featuring a noose, on May 2, 2026. (Screenshot: Itamar Ben Gvir via Instagram)

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Note: This article was first published in the Times of Israel on May 4, 2026. 

We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” from Israel and across the world, categorically condemn the latest display of the macabre celebration of death and killing associated with Israel’s recently passed “Death Penalty for Terrorists” Law. In the most recent example of how this law opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of death, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s wife Ayala presented him with a cake featuring a large picture of a noose at his 50th birthday party this week. The cake includes the text “sometimes dreams do come true” printed in Hebrew on the icing. The noose and message, of course, is a reference to the controversial law mandating the death penalty for Palestinians terrorists, which has long been championed by Ben Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit party.

As Linda Dayan of Haaretz has rightfullyargued, this charade is undoubtedly a political maneuver by Ben Gvir to grab headlines, even if as a target of loathing. In doing so, however, he is once again playing with fire. His noose-laden birthday cake is but the latest iteration of many similar ploys since the start of his death campaign. Taken together, they reveal just how dangerously far the Far Right has moved the needle of reason and respect for human rights in Israel.

Such a debauched spectacle normally would not merit a response. Tragically, the level of bloodlust that permeates the present zeitgeist and the fact that this law has indeed come to fruition necessitate our doing just that. Not to counter such a display would risk further normalizing it.

Ben Gvir’s Pre-Passover “To Death” Toast

An egregious previous example of this horrific kind of political theatre occurred on March 30, 2026, just before Passover, the most widely observed Jewish holiday. It was then that Ben Gvir celebrated the passing of his pet racist, dangerous, vengeful, and unjust death penalty law by raising a champagne bottle and drinking to victory. The customary toast in Jewish tradition, of course, is to exclaim “L’chaim!”, meaning “to Life!” Partly for this reason, the name chosen for the Jewish anti-death penalty group that now includes thousands of members in Israel and abroad is “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Those MKs (Members of the Knesset) who support this law have upended the phrase meant to evoke Judaism’s core life-affirming principles.

Image: Minster of National Security Itamar Ben G'vir holds up a champagne bottle in the Knesset on March 30, 2026, toasting the passage of Israel's new death penalty law. Source: Screenshot from "Knesset Erupts After Death Penalty Law Passed, Ben-Gvir Seen Waving Champagne Bottle | APT" https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=Jm2LjEFckek

While Ben G’vir claims to be a pious and observant Jew, his actions once again reveal his blatant disregard for Jewish values and mockery of Jewish ritual symbolism. He might as well have screamed “Lamavet” (“To Death”) for his celebratory toast. Make no mistake: the passage of this death penalty law will certainly bring death for both convicted terrorists and innocent Israelis and Jews across the world. It is an abjectabomination that will prove disastrous, for multiple reasons.

MK Limor Son Har-Melech’s Purim Death Penalty Costume

The manner in which Ben Gvir and his wife chose to celebrate his birthday with a baked centerpiece of death calls to mind how another member of the Knesset chose to dress for the festive holiday Purim earlier this year. MK Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit) had herself photographed in the costume of what one Haaretz commentator has appropriately dubbed a “Death Eater” (of Harry Potter infamy) in the service of the state. The Israeli lawmaker was dressed in an Israel Prison Service jumpsuit, with a noose in one hand and a syringe of poison in the other. Next to her, in a white dress shirt, was her husband, Yehuda, packing an automatic rifle in what very well may have been an homage to the mass murderer Baruch Goldsteinand wearing signs reading “expulsion,” “conquest,” and “settlement.” Indeed, if one such “Death Eater” were not enough for the aforementioned commentator, Ben Gvir’s symbolic eating of death for his birthday certainly would take the cake.)

Image: Screenshot of a dangerously distasteful image that Member of Knesset (MK) Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit) and her husband Yehuda proliferated on social media over Purim. The MK poses with a noose and syringe in a celebration of those execution methods. Source: https://x.com/limor_sonhrmelh/status/2028926683026178309 No copyright.

Leaving aside the dangerous implications of Yehuda’s chosen garb, it behooves L’chaim to unpack the costume choice of the Member of Knesset. Her wardrobe selection was far worse than a fashion faux pas. Her shameless action celebrated lethal symbols, one of which – lethal injection – is an unquestionable and unconscionable direct Nazi legacy. Ben Gvir has often suggested this so-called “Nazi needle” as a means for state killing. This abject abomination represents the kind of legacy that any such death penalty bill would perpetuate.

MK Son Har-Melech’s costume, like Ben Gvir’s birthday cake and his continuous wearing of a noose-shaped lapel to Knesset hearings and elsewhere in public, glorifies killing and sanctifies revenge in a manner that is not befitting of any civilized society.

The Death Penalty Brings out the “Worst of the Worst” in Humanity

Many supporters claim that society reserves capital punishment for  “the worst of the worst,” a patently false notion. The only “worst of the worst” that applies concerning lex talionis is the reality that the prospect of executions brings out the darkest aspects of human nature in all those who crave it: vengeance, bloodlust, the desire to inflict pain, suffering, and death. The man-made Angel of Death that is capital punishment inevitably carries each of these in spades. Ben Gvir’s birthday cake, his noose lapel, and MK Son Har-Melech’s deplorable Purim behavior and post underscores this tragic truth. They unveil the true, vengeful intention that lies at the heart of the death penalty law that now goes before the Israeli Supreme Court for review.

Image: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attends a committee meeting on legislation mandating the death penalty for terrorists at the Knesset on December 8, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Before brandishing such gruesome symbols as a noose and a syringe on these celebratory occasions, Ben Gvir and Son Har-Melech might have taken a moment to realize the full, perilous implications of readers treating Purim’s Book of Esther as a literal guide for living in the twenty-first century. The example of Baruch Goldstein and brutal execution regimes like Iran reinforce this reality. L’chaim highlighted this juxtaposition in a recent post entitled Haman and his 10 Sons: 11 Reasons to Oppose Israel’s Death Penalty this Purim. We outlined the truths about Israel’s death penalty bill in that essay, and we reiterate them here.

The death penalty will increase – not decrease – terrorist attacks in Israel, creating more murders and martyrs (shahids), and endangering Jews worldwide. It risks executing the innocent. Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. Like tasteless Purim masks, terms like “deterrence,” which is a fallacious delusion when applied to the death penalty,  and “retributive” or “proportional” justice are veils for vengeance, which does not bring closurefor murder victims’ loved ones. The death penalty is racist. It often results inphysical torture, and always ispsychological torture for individuals counting down to their execution day. There is no humane way to execute human beings against their will. The death penalty will traumatize the Israel Prison Service executioners. FromAdolph Hitler to Donald Trump and nowIthamar Ben Gvir, the death penalty is used as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns. And, last but far from least, it violates the human right to life.

Instead of celebrating death, we ask readers to recall the words of Elie Wiesel, whose views encapsulate the stance of L’chaim’s members. When questioned about his feelings on capital punishment, Wiesel resolutely stated, “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” By the end of his life, Wiesel publicly said that he made no exceptionto this rule, stating: “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.”

Twenty-first-century Judaism must hold by the red line that Wiesel set forth. It cannot mirror Hamas, Iran, Saudi Arabia,Yemen, and others by violating its moral obligations and ethical standards and engaging in state-sponsored killings of defenseless prisoners. With Wiesel’s neshama in mind and heart, and on behalf of all L’chaim members, we respectfully implore Israel to join civilized humanity and abolish the death penalty once and for all. The first step toward doing so is the Israeli Supreme Court unconditionally repealing the abject abomination that is Israel’s new death penalty law.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

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Note: This article was published in its initial form in the Jerusalem Post on January 25, 2026, as “Death penalty could turn terrorists into heroes.”A version of it also appeared in the Times of Israel.

The upcoming debate in the Israeli Supreme Court about the legality of the recently passed “Death Penalty for Terrorists” Law is one of the most consequential to come before that esteemed judicial body in the twenty-first century. Its outcome impacts not only the State of Israel, but Jews everywhere. If the Supreme Court fails to repeal the law – if the unconscionable stain of executions succeeds in darkening the moral fabric of Israeli society – antisemitic extremists will assuredly blame all Jews for their state’s sponsored murder program, neatly fitting it into their warped view of Israel – and, by extension, Judaism – as a so-called “Death Cult.”

Just as this law jeopardizes the safety and security of Jews across the globe, it also threatens to permanently mar what remains of Israel’s moral standing among the more than 70% of world nations that have abolished the death penalty in law and practice. In the highly volatile political climate that now imperils the rule of law in Israel, this issue further normalizes the invocation of state violence. It widens the gap between modern-day Israel and the central Jewish value of the inviolability of life. Famed death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel best articulated this stance when he said of capital punishment that – in the shadow of the Holocaust – “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

This vital debate hinges on Israeli Minister of National Security, and fervent death penalty proponent, Itamar Ben-Gvir’s repeated claim that the fear of execution would deter would-be terrorists. Earlier this year, in the wake of the fatal ramming and stabbing of two Israeli citizens in Beit She’an, Ben-Gvir falsely claimed that passing his execution law would help to deter others from committing such deadly acts of terror. Ben-Gvir’s statement reflects a popular fallacy that scholars have debunked time and again. Despite this fact, Ben-Gvir’s abominable, politically-motivated comments calling death penalty opponents “Hamas supporters” – just like his monstrous noose-shaped lapel pin – seem to have deluded many Israelis and Jews. As a result, support for his death law now appears to have gained much traction across Israel. This widespread refusal to comprehend the myth of deterrence – whether by willful ignorance or otherwise – necessitates a deeper dive into how the death penalty would indeed not deter, but instead would only incite terrorists and shaheeds (”martyrs”).

Deterrence is an Abject Fallacy

The state of Florida, which led the United States with 19 executions in 2025, is the most appropriate place to turn at this pivotal moment to unpack the myth that the threat of the death penalty will deter criminals from committing more serious crimes. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Sunshine State’s flagship death penalty abolitionist organization, cited a 2017 Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) report that confirmed that “no evidence exists to support this claim [of the death penalty’s deterrence of crime], and the data suggests the opposite.” DPIC added that an “analysis of US murder data from 1987 through 2015 . . . found no evidence that the death penalty deters murder or protects police.” Instead, as DPIC continued, “the evidence show[ed] that murder rates… are consistently higher in death penalty states than in states that have abolished the death penalty.” The study demonstrated that the murder rate in death penalty states (6.646) was higher than the national average (6.424) and significantly higher than in non-death penalty states (4.788).

A 2021 article by the reputable Florida newspaper, the Sun Sentinel, reported similar findings and determined that “[a]nnual murder rates are consistently higher overall in the death penalty states than in the 22 without capital punishment.”A more recent analysis by the Death Penalty Policy Project has also concluded that “after 1,600 Executions, the Public and Police are Safer in States with No Death Penalty.”

Another means of disproving the death penalty deterrence myth is by analyzing data regarding mass shootings, which are, of course, endemic to the United States, where capital punishment remains legal in many jurisdictions. As of March 11, 2023, the Gun Violence Archive reported 106 mass shootings in 2023. Only 23 (21.7%) of those mass shootings were in non-death penalty states. Altogether, these 106 mass shootings killed 157 people and injured an additional 415. Eighty-two percent of the fatalities were in death penalty states, and eighty-one percent of the injuries were in death penalty states. The Death Penalty Policy Project corroborated these findings in another recent publication, concluding that “the Death Penalty Does Not Deter Mass Shootings.” This data speaks for itself, underscoring how deterrence is a trumped-up fallacy when it comes to the death penalty.

The Death Penalty Would Entice Future Shaheeds (“Martyrs”)

On the contrary, there is ample reason to conclude that the prospect of martyrdom through execution would only increase the likelihood of future acts of terror across Israel. A renowned comment regarding the well-established relationship between the death penalty and a desire for martyrdom comes from 19th-century writer Eliphas Levi. Levi demonstrated a keen understanding of the dynamics at play when he wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.”

Applying Levi’s wisdom to modern-day Israel, it becomes clear that a mandatory death sentence for Palestinians who murder Jews will almost certainly increase the number of terrorist attacks. Radical Islamist terrorists – like those who perpetrated mass murder on October 7th, 2023 – celebrate martyrdom to receive the supposed rewards awaiting them in paradise. They want to die for their cause. Their preference is for martyrdom in the act of killing, but if they can kill and then be placed on a pedestal to be lauded as heroes facing the death penalty for their cause, then all the better, even more so if they get to become celebrities in a world where Israel is hated because of how it treats non-Jewish citizens. If the death penalty is instituted, these scenarios could happen. Why would Israel want to encourage potential terrorists? On this purely practical level, this legislation is insane. A far harsher punishment is incarceration. Let perpetrators consider what they have done and why they endure the constrictions of a maximum-security prison every day. As a former Jewish prison chaplain, I can personally attest to this harsh reality.

Proponents of the death penalty have argued that executing terrorists will prevent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps. Israel can avoid this simply by changing the law to forbid including those directly involved in murder in any future prisoner exchanges, with no exceptions. This policy would solve the problem without creating more dead martyrs around whose memory other terrorists would most assuredly rally.

A Cautionary Tale of Failed Deterrence

Members of the Knesset and their constituents celebrating this death penalty law would do well to consider the cautionary tale of the Israeli government’s longstanding policy of demolishing the family homes of terrorists after they have committed attacks. It is well known that this policy has done nothing to “deter” acts of violence and murder. Despite the government’s claims, terror attacks continue unabated. Home demolition is nothing more than an act of revenge and collective punishment that is in direct violation of international humanitarian law. Proponents of Ben-Gvir’s death penalty law seem to have convinced themselves that adding the clear-cut human rights offense of the death penalty to the list of vengeful, medieval practices will do what home demolitions could not, and reduce terrorist attacks. This rationale constitutes a grave miscalculation, with potentially lethal consequences for Israel and all the Jewish world. For this reason alone, amidst many others, Israeli Supreme Court justices must cast a resounding “No!” in response to the death penalty law now before them. They instead should unconditionally repeal this law, encouraging Israel to return to the civilized, abolitionist path, 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

Of capital punishment, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel said: "Death should never be the answer in a civilized society." Photo source: https://www.jewishrichmond.org/jcrc/public-statements/jcrc-statements-comments-articles/public-statement-the-passing-of-elie-wiesel

Note: This article was first published in the Times of Israel on March 26, 2026.

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In this liminal moment, as Israel’s new racist, vengeful, unjust and dangerous death penalty law has now passed the Knesset awaits review before the Israeli Supreme Court, many individuals have asked for a statement from the group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” whose thousands of members hail from Israel and across the world. While we certainly could direct those inquiring to L’chaim’s numerous publications on the matter, it seems that the most fitting comment should come instead from the individual whose staunch opposition to the death penalty forms a foundational philosophy for L’chaim; namely, Holocaust survivor, acclaimed author, and human rights activist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016). Here is the famous quote that best encapsulates Wiesel’s inflamed opposition to the death penalty in all forms:

“Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

Wiesel would no doubt reiterate this very statement if he were alive today and asked about Israel’s newly-minted death penalty law for convicted terrorists. It is a torch that L’chaim members carry in our hearts and souls. Wiesel’s comment is a simple phrase that should echo throughout the collective consciousness of all humanity, and in the hearts and souls of all Israelis now as their highest court reviews this abject abomination. Wiesel’s words should serve as a mantra for our world when anyone raises the barbaric scepter of a return to capital punishment. He assuredly would roll over in his grave were he now to witness Israel, a country that he loved so deeply, having crossed the precipice of such disastrous folly.

Wiesel’s record of staunch death penalty opposition

Wiesel expounded upon the subject of the death penalty for a 1989 recording he made with other death penalty abolitionists entitled Lighting the Torch of Conscience, in which he stated the following:

“Death should be opposed, not served. I have seen too much death in my life. I have met too many people who served death in my life…

There is no reason in the world why death should be imposed by people of good will, of intelligence, of kindness – people in the name of justice – on other people. Those who sinned – those who committed crimes – can be punished in other ways, but not with death. When we impose death on others, we are doing something to ourselves…

With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms…

I belong to a tradition – a Jewish tradition – that says that when a Sanhedrin in ancient times pronounced one death sentence in its entire tenure, that Sanhedrin – that Supreme Court – was called murderous.”

It is not difficult to discern from Wiesel’s stated position how he would respond to the notion that the modern Israeli government might execute not one, but potentially hundreds of convicted terrorists.

Wiesel’s words form one of our anthems in “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” a group of dedicated death penalty abolitionists that includes many individuals – like myself – who are scions of Holocaust survivors. Our critics have argued that Wiesel was on record stating, as late as 1989, that he made an exception for convicted Nazis like Adolph Eichmann. Like Wiesel, I, too, once supported the death penalty for those who murdered my family members in the Holocaust. Just as my mind shifted on this point, so, it seems, did Wiesel’s by the end of his life. A public statement that Wiesel made six years before his death indicates this apparent change of heart.

Wiesel’s final, unequivocal clarion call against capital punishment

As late as Oct. 27, 2010, Wiesel spoke out against the death penalty during a lecture on capital punishment at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Earlier that day at a press conference, he was asked about his feelings on the possible execution of the perpetrators of a horrific home invasion that had taken place in nearby Cheshire, CT, in 2007. As a Connecticut native myself, I shall never forget that case, which all the local news stations carried at the time. On July 23, 2007, Linda Hayes (born Steven Hayes) and Joshua Komisarjevsky invaded the residence of the Petit family in the small town of Cheshire. Though initially planning only to rob the house, Hayes and Komisarjevsky horrifically raped, attacked, and murdered Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit. They mercilessly burned young Hayley and Michaela alive. Their father, Dr. William Petit, escaped with severe injuries. The Hartford Courant cited this case as “possibly the most widely publicized crime in the state’s history.”

When asked for his opinion on the death penalty for the perpetrators, Wiesel focused his remarks on people like Dr. Petit and himself, both of whom were family members of murder victims. (Wiesel lost both parents and a sister in the Nazi death camps.) He indicated that society should punish such murderers more harshly than other prisoners and encouraged the criminal justice system to focus efforts on the survivors of violent crimes “so that families will not feel cheated by the law.” “But,” he said, “death is not the answer.” He emphasized that he might change his stance if the death penalty could bring back victims, which, of course, it could not. “I know the pain of those who survive,” Wiesel said. “Believe me, I know… Your wound is open. It will remain. You are mourning, and how can I not feel the pain of your mourning? But death is not the answer.” He concluded: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

Wiesel’s words are a clarion call. They confirm that by the end of his life, he likely would have joined renowned Hebrew university philosophers Samuel Hugo Bergmann and Nathan Rotenstreich, scholar of Kabbalah Gershom Scholem, and Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber, all of whom opposed Eichmann’s state killing, which Buber called a great “mistake.” Other Holocaust survivors themselves, such as Nobel-prize-winning author Nelly Sachs, voiced strident opposition to Eichmann’s execution.

Israel must heed Wiesel’s call

For a multitude of reasons, L’chaim members remain committed to the conclusion that Elie Wiesel – Sachs’ fellow Nobel laureate – would stridently oppose Israel’s newest law to execute convicted terrorists. Beyond its blatant human rights transgression, the death penalty will increase – not decrease – terrorist attacks in Israel, creating more murders and martyrs (shahids), and endangering Jews worldwide. It risks executing the innocent. Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. Terms like “deterrence,” which is a fallacious delusion when applied to the death penalty, and “retributive” or “proportional” justice are veils for vengeance, which does not bring closure for murder victims’ loved ones. The death penalty is racist. It 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 death penalty will traumatize the Israel Prison Service executioners. And, last but certainly not least, from Adolph Hitler to Donald Trump and now Ithamar Ben Gvir, the death penalty is used as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns.

In addition to understanding much of the above, Wiesel came to realize that any nation that opens Pandora’s Box by dealing with the manufactured “Angel of Death” that is capital punishment has crossed the Rubicon beyond the bounds of civilized humanity. He knew that when this happens, all bets are off for what nightmares may come. He would no doubt lament how far the world still has to go in its sacred mission of global abolition.

In this decisive moment in the spiritual evolution of Israel – and indeed of all human civilization – Israeli citizens must heed Wiesel’s prophetic words. They must not neglect their responsibility to work to close the door on this artificial “Angel of Death” by calling upon Supreme Court justices to vote “no” to the recent death penalty law, and “yes” to civilized humanity, 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

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Thailand: His Holiness The Dalai Lama

His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Thailand also agrees with this point. “My overriding belief,” he has said, “is that it is always possible for criminals to improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts this.” And on another occasion, he firmly stated: “I wholeheartedly support an appeal to those countries who at present employ the death penalty to employ an unconditional moratorium. We need to explain the importance of the practice of love and compassion for our own survival and to try to minimize those conditions which foster murderous tendencies.”

South Africa: Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress applauded his overseeing of the abolition of the death penalty at the start of his administration in 1995, saying, “never, never and never again must citizens of our country be subjected to the barbaric practice of capital punishment.” Mandela himself stated: “The death sentence is a barbaric act . . . It is a reflection of the animal instinct still in human beings.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa also emphasized that “the abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life.” Tutu also said: “There is no justice in killing in the name of justice.”

Russia: Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy

In Russia, famed author Fyodor Dostoevsky, who himself was an execution survivor, wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Similarly, he realized that “a society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.” In his fictional work The Idiot, Dostoevsky wrote: “Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.” Fellow Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy was more vivid in his position on the matter, writing:

“During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I.”

Poland: Halina Bortnowska

Staying for the moment in Eastern Europe, let us reflect on the words of Polish author Halina Bortnowska, a professor of philosophy and theology, an anti-Communist fighter, and a human rights activist. “Criminals are human beings, too,” writes Bortnowska. “They continue to be human beings. No one has the power to dehumanize someone. We punish people, but they remain our neighbors. Our own dignity and conscience require moderate punishment – it cannot be cruel, it cannot be offensive to humanity – because it is wicked and always happens at the expense of the humanity of those who impose and execute the punishment.”

United Kingdom: Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Pierrepoint, Richard Branson, J.R.R. Tolkien

Turning our attention to the British Isles, consider the words of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde: “One is absolutely sickened,” he wrote, “not by the crimes that the wicked have committed but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.” Or, George Bernard Shaw: “Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it.” Better yet, ponder the hard-learned lesson of Albert Pierrepoint, an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. As he stated, “Capital punishment in my view achieved nothing except revenge.” Contemporary British icons such as billionaire Richard Branson have continued the charge toward global abolition. “The death penalty, writes Branson, “is broken beyond repair and plainly fails to deliver justice by every reasonable measure. It is marred by cruelty, waste, ineffectiveness, discrimination, and an unacceptable risk of error.”

Fans of British literature also will want to learn that J.R.R. Tolkien – author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy – himself was likely a death penalty abolitionist. Read his thoughts through the voice of Gandalf the Grey as he reprimands Frodo Baggins for believing that Gollum deserved punishment: “‘Deserves death!’ explained Gandalf, ‘I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.’”

France: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Baron de Montesquieu, Albert Camus, Robert Badinter, Christiane Taubira,

Moving across the Channel to France, let us recall the prophetic words of some of the Age of Enlightenment’s leading figures. Eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued, “No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.” Note as well the abolitionist writings of Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) – Rousseau’s contemporary, who wrote sarcastically: “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” Voltaire also wrote: “Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.” And again, consider French philosophe Baron de Montesquieu’s well-known quip: “This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.”

Post-Enlightenment France did not stop shedding light on this man-made darkness. Two centuries after Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, author and philosopher Albert Camus of France had the following epiphany:

“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”

One eminent French – and Jewish – figure who rightfully received global attention upon his passing in 2024 was the former French Minister of Justice, Robert Badinter, of blessed memory. The Holocaust experience of Badinter’s family was punctuated by the unfathomable murder of his father, Simon Badinter, in the Sobibor concentration camp in 1943. Emboldened by this killing and the lessons of the unparalleled conflagration of the Shoah, Badinter went on in his illustrious legal and political career to successfully advocate for the ultimate abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. A tribute celebrating his accomplishments poignantly described that when Badinter was confronted with Klaus Barbie, the Nazi who had arrested and sent his father to his death, he proudly “stood by his opposition to the death penalty and did not wish nor seek to have his father’s killer executed. He thereby demonstrated a rare willingness to place principle over the powerful personal desire to avenge the brutal death of a beloved parent. This abolitionist tradition continues in France today, where former French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira notably concluded: “Capital punishment is a denial of human dignity.”

Italy: Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria

As our gaze shifts to Italy, we learn of Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio, an 18th-century criminologist, jurist, philosopher, economist, and politician widely considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment. “The punishment of death,” wrote Beccaria, “is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful.”

The Vatican: All 21st-century Popes

From Italy, we can turn to the Vatican, where all twenty-first-century popes have preached in favor of abolishing the death penalty. Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) significantly moved the Church’s position by urging global abolition, calling executions “cruel and unnecessary.” Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013) continued this trend, advocating for abolition and emphasizing mercy. The previous head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis (2013-2025), made the definitive shift, revising the Catechism (2018) to declare the death penalty “inadmissible” in all circumstances, attacking the “inviolability and dignity of the person,” and working for its global abolition. Finally, the current pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, restated his own longstanding abolitionist stance once he was elected to the papacy, stating that support for the death penalty is “not really pro-life.” On April 24, 2026, Pope Leo XIV reiterated this message when he deliv­ered a video mes­sage offer­ing his sup­port and bless­ings to those work­ing ​“for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States of America and around the world.” As a result of these papal directives, organizations such as the Catholic Mobilizing Network and the Community of Sant’Egidio devote significant resources to advocating for global abolition.

United States: Cultural, Moral, Religious, Intellectual, and Political Figures and Organizations

Rounding out our abridged list, let us return to the United States for other quotes from renowned abolitionists from across the political spectrum. Take Mr. Fred Rogers, a card-carrying Republican, who was known to have said that the death penalty “just sends a horribly wrong message to children” and asked, “What are our children learning from us when we model that this is an appropriate way of responding to societal problems?” Take, as well, President Jimmy Carter, an avowed Democrat, who wrote in an op-ed, “[T]here has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent.” Carter later added: “Perhaps the strongest argument against the death penalty is extreme bias against the poor, minorities, or those with diminished mental capacity. Although homicide victims are six times more likely to be black rather than white, 77 percent of death penalty cases involve white victims. Also, it is hard to imagine a rich white person going to the death chamber after being defended by expensive lawyers. This demonstrates a higher value placed on the lives of white Americans.”

Also on the political Left was former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is on record saying: “A humane and generous concern for every individual, his health and his fulfilment, will do more to soothe the savage heart than the fear of state-inflicted death, which chiefly serves to remind us how close we remain to the jungle.” Politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, and Jamie Raskin – among many others – all have made similar statements in support of abolition. Many lawmakers now indeed echo US Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s famous promise that “From this day forward, I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.”

It should come as no surprise that many renowned Catholic Americans like Sister Helen Prejean have spoken out vociferously against the death penalty, even appearing jointly with L’chaim members. “If we believe that murder is wrong,” Sister Helen has written, “and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.” Her famed book Dead Man Walking and its graphic novel, film, stage, and opera adaptations have gone on to inspire the likes of pop icons Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon to become anti-death penalty activists. Other Protestant religious leaders and organizations, such as the Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, Shane Claiborne, and the evangelical group Equal Justice USA, continue to gain a growing following across the United States.

Numerous social influencers and celebrities are opposed to the death penalty across the USA. American celebrities such as Joan Baez, Steve Earle, and Kim Kardashian have joined the abolitionist ranks. Sports icons such as the late Dean Smith, former Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne, and former LSU Basketball coach Dale Brown have also joined the cause.

Among American abolitionist intellectuals, Noam Chomsky is a notable figure on the Left. “The death penalty can be tolerated,” wrote Chomsky, “only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.” Conservative intellectuals who lend their voices to abolition include George Will, Col. Oliver North, Richard Vigurie, Drew Johnson, and Jay Sekulow. Others can be found on the website of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

Grassroots NGOs dedicated to the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, such as Death Penalty Action and Death Penalty Focus, among others, alongside multiple state-specific groups, employ all these voices in seeking to end American executions.

American Medical Professionals

Countless medical professionals are forbidden from participating in executions on ethical grounds, including the members of the American Medical Association and the American Nursing Association. One of these is Dr. Deepak Chopra, who wrote: “Under what possible moral scheme can a civilized country consider this anything but barbaric? Our prisons are called penitentiaries (from the root word ‘penance’) because, over two hundred years ago, it was felt that an enlightened society must move beyond Old Testament revenge for wrongdoing. Now we have slipped back across that moral boundary, and the saddest thing, in this boom time for building more prisons, locking away more non-violent criminals, and handing down maximum sentences, is that we have learned to condone cruelty almost as if it didn’t exist. As if it was a good thing.”

Of particular note is the view of Dr. Joel Zivot, a practicing anesthesiologist and intensive care physician and a senior fellow in ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Zivot, who also holds a legal master’s degree, is a recognized expert who advocates against the use of lethal injection in the death penalty and against the use of the tools of medicine as an arm of state power. In a poignant essay for the Jurist entitled “Israel’s death penalty bill will bring darkness, not deterrence,” Zivot argued that “Israel’s proposed death penalty legislation for convicted terrorists is legally unenforceable under existing Israeli law, medically untenable without physician cooperation, and morally corrosive to the democratic values Israel seeks to uphold.”

American Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin

Those who rationalize their pro-death position by arguing that Israel should have the death penalty option simply because of the example of the United States should consider the many Founding Fathers who opposed capital punishment. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Beccaria and other writers on crimes and punishments had satisfied the reasonable world of the unrightfulness and inefficacy of the punishment of crimes by death.” As Paul Jacob has shared, “I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgement had been demonstrated.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush, in his 1792 piece “Punishing Murder by Death,” unequivocally wrote that “The punishment of murder by death is contrary to reason, and to the order and happiness of society…It lessens the horror of taking away human life, and thereby tends to multiply murders.” James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was one of several founding fathers who sought to reduce the number of executions, saying, “I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishments by any State willing to make it.” Finally, for Benjamin Franklin, abolition was also very clearly the path forward. “The punishment of murder by death,” he wrote, “is contrary to reason, and to the order and happiness of society, and contrary to divine revelation. As historian John Bessler has concluded, “the Founding Fathers were deeply ambivalent about capital punishment…[T]hey embraced the principle of Montesquieu and Beccaria that any punishment that goes beyond what is ‘absolutely necessary’ is ‘tyrannical.’ In an era of maximum-security prisons and life-without-parole sentences, the death penalty can no longer be considered necessary.”

The Death Penalty Morally Condemns any Executing Nation

Many of the American Founding Fathers, like many of the luminaries who have led America and the world in thought and progress in each generation since the Enlightenment, doubtless would support the idea of Israel and the United States joining the more than seventy percent of countries worldwide that have now abolished the death penalty. They stand with us in our sacred mission to bring this to fruition, just as we stand in their shadow and on their shoulders in solidarity. Those who are with us are with them; those who stand against us oppose them. They align themselves with executing nations, the likes of Iran, which put to death over 2,200 human beings in 2025, Saudi Arabia, which hit a record 356 in the same year, as well as the executing regimes of Hamas and Yemen, among others.

History has demonstrated and will continue to reveal that the death penalty not only condemns individuals to death, but it also morally condemns any civilization that enacts it. May Israel not follow this ill-fated path.

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

Image: The Eitz Hayim - the Tree of Life - features as the centerpeice of the official logo of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” a group founded in 2020, with thousands of members in Israel and across the world.

The ongoing public debate over Israel’s proposed death penalty for terrorists law has highlighted a fundamental existential question for Israelis and Jews across the world. The law’s opponents rightfully expose the false claim that the death penalty deters 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 law 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 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 law, 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 law now before the Israeli Supreme Court 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 before the Israeli Supreme Courtt: 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 law 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 law 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 law. 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 law 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 law-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 law – 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

Image: A significant historical document from World War II known as the Ivanhorod Einsatzgruppen photograph. It was taken in 1942 near Ivanhorod, Ukraine, and depicts a Nazi Einsatzgruppen (mobile death squad) executing Jewish civilians. The photograph shows a soldier aiming a rifle at a woman who is trying to shield a child. It  was intercepted by the Polish resistance at a Warsaw post office while being mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany. The original print is currently held in the Historical Archives in Warsaw.

NOTE: In response to this week’s once unthinkable breaking news that the U.S. Justice Department plans to bring back firing squads as a permitted method of execution, we, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” across the world feel compelled to reiterate exactly why this is a slap in the face of Jews everywhere. 

The move is part of a broader push by the White House to speed up federal death penalty sentences after a moratorium on executions under the Biden administration. Of note, on the same day that this news broke, Pope Leo XIV once again unequivocally condemned capital punishment, calling for its abolition in the United States. "The right to life is the very foundation of every other human right," the pope said. "For this reason, only when a society safeguards the sanctity of human life will it flourish and prosper." We at L’chaim could not agree more…

To highlight the parallel life-affirming stance of  L’chaim (which literally means “To Life!”), we reprint below our essay “A Jewish Response to the Resumption of US Firing-Squad Executions.” We first published this essay in the Jurist on March 5, 2025, just ahead of South Carolina’s firing squad execution of our long longtime penpal Brad Simon. It was subsequently reprinted in the Times of Israel, followed by an appearance in Counterpunch. May it help to open heaters and minds now in the wake of the abject abomination that the federal government now seeks to unleash.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

____________________________________

A Jewish Response to the Resumption of US Firing-Squad Executions

Michael Zoosman

MARCH 5, 2025

Edited by: Ingrid Burke Friedman | JURIST Editorial Director

Jurist Editorial Note: “The author argues that firing squad executions, like the scheduled execution of his pen pal Brad Sigmon in South Carolina, evoke Nazi atrocities and violate the Jewish commitment to human dignity and life, making capital punishment morally unacceptable regardless of the crimes committed…”

On Friday, March 7, 2025 just ahead of Shabbat, a South Carolina firing squad will shoot to death my longtime pen pal and friend Brad Sigmon. This will mark the first American firing squad execution to take place in 15 years. Accordingly, it will be the first since I co-founded the 3,800+-member-strong L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty in response to the aptly named “Trump killing spree” of 2020-2021. As the Death Penalty Information Center reports, only four states other than South Carolina allow for the use of the fir­ing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah. Three exe­cu­tions by fir­ing squad have been car­ried out in the US since 1977 — all of which have tak­en place in Utah. The was the 2010 exe­cu­tion of Ronnie Lee Gardner. Friday will mark the start of South Carolina’s first attempt to perpetrate an intentional fatal shooting of a prisoner. The resurrection of this barbaric execution method to kill Brad merits a public response from a Jewish perspective.

Brad has been on South Carolina’s Death Row for decades. From our first conversation ahead of a previous execution date four years ago, Brad openly admitted to having brutally murdered Gladys Gwendolyn (b. Jan. 1 1942) and William David (b. Feb. 28, 1939) Larke, on April 27, 2001, after an argument with his ex-girlfriend in what he described to me as a devastating crime of passion — one compounded by mental illness and childhood trauma. May the abiding spirits of Gladys and William Larke be loving guides and consummate blessings for all who were privileged to know them in this world. As with every execution, L’chaim members and I will join the ranks of Death Penalty Action to remember the Larke family in prayer during the online vigil that will be held ahead of Brad’s state murder.

Fellow abolitionists will also offer at that time a final prayer for Brad, who has grown exponentially from the person who committed those unimaginable acts decades ago. From the onset of his relationship with me, Brad has demonstrated his impassioned regret over his actions, which haunt him with all of his being and at every waking moment. My experience with Brad conforms with comments from his attorney Gerald “Bo” King, who has observed that Brad “is deeply devout and has spent pret­ty much every day of his incar­cer­a­tion try­ing to express his remorse and pen­i­tence for these crimes.” Brad and other condemned human beings with whom I have corresponded in South Carolina have time and again conveyed to me how he has become a role model in both his faith in the Divine and his lovingkindness for his peers on what he has come to call “Life Row.” As one minister has noted, Brad could be “an informal chaplain on Death Row because of the ways he pastors and mentors his fellow inmates.”

I cannot begin to put myself in the position of the loved ones of Brad’s murder victims. In a powerful synchronicity that serves to highlight this fact, it so happens that Brad’s victim William David Larke, the father of Brad’s ex-girlfriend, shares the very same birthdate and year as my own father Bob Zoosman: February 28, 1939. This powerful connection compels me to consider that if Brad had murdered my dad, it is quite possible that all bets would be off for my abolitionist sentiment. In that scenario, I could very well find myself desiring — and perhaps even advocating for — the death of my loved one’s killer.

As a hospital chaplain, I have regularly counseled mourners that they should feel permission to experience the full gamut of human emotion while grieving, including rage, and even the desire for vengeance where applicable. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position. A civilized society has a responsibility to protect and honor all such mourners, while also upholding the most basic human rights upon which this world stands. Fundamental to these, of course, is the right to life itself. For this reason alone, more than 70% of the nations of the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

Recently, Brad asked if I might offer him a Jewish blessing ahead of being shot to death. He and I were able to do so by phone just days ahead of his execution. Let there be no doubt: Brad is an Evangelical Christian, and extremely well-supported by his spiritual advisors, as facilitated by a truly inspiring team of activists at South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, led by the Rev. F. Hillary Taylor. As someone who has become my penpal over the years and who holds great respect for Jewish traditions while also being guided by his own faith, Brad had a final wish for me to offer this prayer. And so I did. As with any traditional Jewish prayer for healing, I chanted a blessing for his spiritual wellness using both his name and the name of his mother, Virginia, who the state will transform into another bereaved murder victim family member once Friday’s horror likely transpires.

Brad’s request for a Jewish prayer offered a further reminder to this former prison chaplain of the reality of the interfaith connections among the condemned. It should not be surprising, then, that Jessie Hoffman — the first person who is scheduled to be gassed to death in the state of Louisiana, less than two weeks after Brad on March 18th — is married to a woman who is Jewish. Mrs. Hoffman is a member of L’chaim and like myself and so many other members, knows all-too-well the unconscionable Nazi legacy of any such gassing executions. This includes Arizona’s recent plans to use the gas Zyklon-B —  of Auschwitz infamy — in its future gas chamber.

A similar sentiment holds true for firing squads in the modern Jewish collective consciousness. While the use of firing squads indeed predatesthe Holocaust, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum illustrates in detail how Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units operating under the command of the Schutzstaffel (SS), shot and summarily executed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of other people during the Second World War in German-occupied Europe. At the notorious Babi Yar massacre alone, about 34,000 Jews were murdered in two days of such firing squad killings near Kiev. Any post-Holocaust use of a firing squad for state-sponsored murder is forever tainted by the cold blood in which these ancestors were targeted. It is a slap in the face to the thousands of Jews who say “Never Again!” to the state-sponsored murder of prisoners.

L’chaim members who descend from the survivors of these events know better than most that capital punishment is indeed not the same as genocide. Members also know better than most that when someone who is in a state’s direct line of fire — like Brad — reaches out for a blessing, it is incumbent for it to be provided. This is among the reasons why L’chaim answered Brad’s prayer call, sending alongside it countless personalized messages of support from members across the world.

Naysayers often remind abolitionists that it was in fact Brad’s own decision for the state to murder him by firing squad, which is indeed true. Brad informed me that he elected this execution method because of the protracted pain and suffering that his fellow South Carolinians had experienced while being put to death by lethal injection, which is of course the other killing mode available in his state’s version of what can perhaps best be described as a veritable Sophie’s Choice 2.0. Members of L’chaim are keenly aware how that choice, too, perpetuates a Nazi legacy. Lest it be forgotten: lethal injection was first implemented in this world by the Nazis as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” That protocol was developed by Dr. Karl Brandt, personal physician of Adolf Hitler, who personally signed off on the initiative.

Whether firing squad, gassing, lethal injection, or otherwise, there is no humane way to execute a human being. It is often physical torture, and always psychological torture, a fact that Brad’s nightmarish experience of an attempted suicide ahead of a previous execution date drove home for me. The indisputable reality that so many state killing methods evoke the Third Reich’s horrors — one of the darkest chapters of human history — punctuates why twenty-first century Judaism along with all of civilized humanitymust work toward absolute abolition of the death penalty, without exception.

Twentieth-century Jewish human rights icon Elie Wiesel encapsulated the stand of the members of L’chaim. When asked about his feelings on capital punishment, Wiesel resolutely stated“Death is not the answer.” In a videotaped interview he gave with Amnesty International in the 1990s, Wiesel clearly made no exception to this stance, stating: “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.” This is the torch that L’chaim members carry.

In the wake of the Shoah and the unparalleled horrors of the twentieth century, nations of the world increasingly have recognized the inviolability of the human right of life and have abolished the state-sponsored murder of the incarcerated. Modern-day Judaism, directly targeted by that unparalleled conflagration, must reflect this by evolving beyond its ancient reluctance to allow capital punishment, even with prodigious rabbinic safeguards. It must become a Tree of Life for all — one whose branches extend as a model across this world. This includes for the so-called “worst of the worst,” from Nazi perpetrators, to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, to the Hamas terrorists who carried out the unspeakable October 7th attacks. It is a non-starter that the limbs of that tree also extend to my penpal Brad Sigmon, and to any future state firing squad, gassing or lethal injection victims.

The cycle of violence must end and these Nazi legacies must be put to rest once and for all.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, serves as a Board Certified Chaplain with Ohalah: Association of Rabbis and Cantors for Jewish Renewal. He is the Co-Founder of L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty and an Advisory Committee Member for Death Penalty Action.

Caption: Headline of the June 5, 1962, New York Times article about Martin Buber’s objections to the execution of Nazi perpetrator Adolph Eichmann.

Note: This article first appeared in its original form on January 1, 2026, in the Times of Israel.

“But what about Nuremberg and Eichmann?”

In the shadow of the Shoah, many death penalty debates in Jewish circles eventually arrive at this question. The thousands of Israeli and worldwide members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” – of which this former Jewish prison chaplain is a co-founder – often encounter individuals who cite these two cases as evidence that there are indeed times when the death penalty is an appropriate response to monstrous actions. Now, in the wake of Israel’s passage of its racist, vengeful, unjust, and dangerous death penalty law for convicted terrorists this past March 30, many conversations throughout Israel and the Jewish world ultimately conjure these potent memories. Death penalty debates for convicted terrorists like those arrested for the October 7, 2023, massacre – the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust – naturally strike this nerve,  triggering individual, collective, and intergenerational trauma.

The dialogue between death penalty law proponents and detractors usually begins with supporters parroting the debunked myth of deterrence – that killing captured Hamas terrorists will save Israeli lives. This, of course, is patently false. Opponents of the law respond to this lie by citing one of the manifold studies that proliferate disproving the deterrence fallacy, adding that executing convicted terrorists would only create more shaheeds (“martyrs”) among Israel’s enemies. Death penalty advocates often brush aside these facts. There are, however, those who can acknowledge this reality. Still, many of those individuals inevitably then pose the fateful question: “But what about Nuremberg and Eichmann?”

“Nuremberg” refers to the main Nuremberg Trial (International Military Tribunal), where death sentences led to the hangings of 10 high-ranking Nazis on October 16, 1946, with another scheduled (Hermann Göring) committing suicide. While the court sentenced 12 to death in total, Göring avoided execution, and the tribunal tried Martin Bormann in absentia, enabling him to escape hanging. The second reference is to Israel’s 1962 hanging of Nazi officer Otto Adolf Eichmann for his role as one of the primary architects of the Final Solution. Hannah Arendt covered Eichmann’s trial, during which she famously employed the term “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. Proponents of Israel’s death penalty bill today attempt to justify their position by equating perpetrators of the October 7, 2023, massacre with Eichmann and the Nazi mass murderers sentenced to death at Nuremberg. If we could rationalize it for the Third Reich, they argue, surely we can do so for Hamas terrorists, as well. The implication is that such “evil” demands execution, and – perhaps more on point – that there are instances when revenge through state killing is entirely appropriate.

For many L’chaim members like myself whose family members were Holocaust victims, this argument strikes a chord. Indeed, it is the very example of the Holocaust that undergirds much of the L’chaim members’ passion for death penalty abolition. I personally know how difficult it is to transcend the overwhelming longing for violent retaliation. I grew up as an ardent supporter of the death penalty, gripped in the spell of the same vengeful bloodlust that has plagued so many of my species. I therefore strive never to judge others who harbor such feelings, especially not when horrific antisemitic acts of terror, such as the mass murder and violence of October 7th, have victimized them. I hope that a brief review here of my own transformation over time might demonstrate the futility of invoking Nuremberg and Eichmann in the death penalty debate. Instead, I pray that it might help lead to a re-examination of beliefs about vengeful, retributive killings.

The Shadow of the Holocaust and a Jewish Prison Chaplain’s Change of Heart on the Death Penalty 

My change of heart regarding capital punishment took place over three decades, and it both began and ended with the Holocaust. Many of my childhood Passover Seders and Jewish/secular holiday gatherings were punctuated by my grandmother and her sister, of blessed memories, sharing details of their harrowing Shoah experiences. Their survival, and, by extension, my very existence, would not have been possible without the martyrdom of Mr. Michał Cegielski, a Polish Catholic man who hid them and other members of my family on his farm at the risk of death – a penalty he ultimately received. (My family and I attempted for decades to locate Mr. Cegielski’s whole identity, and now he is rightfully honored in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Israel.)

During my formative years, I believed firmly that anyone who had tormented and murdered my family members, or, for that matter, Mr. Cegielski, deserved to suffer and die. At times, I even felt that I would be prepared to tear them apart with my own bare hands – as painfully as possible – for what they did to my family and my people. The anger that intergenerational trauma had birthed decades before I entered the world was still palpable and powerful, instilling in my heart a nearly murderous rage. This feeling logically extended in my mind to any human being who committed such heinous acts as murder, and I imagined that many other family members of victims felt the same way I did. As I saw it, the Torah clearly endorsed my feelings with its famous declaration of “ayin takha ayin” – “an eye for an eye.” (Lev. 24: 19-21).

Not until my years of service as a Jewish prison chaplain in Canada did I seriously begin to explore the issue of state killings. I had sought out this unique pastoral care work after spending years visiting my former college roommate and friend, “Levi,” when he was incarcerated at Sing Sing and other notorious prisons across New York state. Previously, while in university with me, Levi had experienced a psychotic break, causing him to assault and nearly kill his mother violently. My visits with Levi over the years made me realize the need for spiritual support for the incarcerated, and exposed me for the first time to others in prisons who had indeed taken human lives.

In my newfound role as a prison chaplain in Canada, which had abolished the death penalty decades prior, I began to witness firsthand many profound examples of transformation in individuals whose vicious crimes might have qualified them for execution in the United States. I became well-acquainted with these men and women, who emerged not as monstrous and unfeeling murderers and rapists, but rather as complex human beings, not so different from my friend Levi – or even from myself. Among them were individuals who, after years of incarceration, showed sincere contrition, offered heartfelt apologies, and demonstrated fundamental behavioral change – a phenomenon that Judaism describes as teshuvah (repentance). Were these really the sort of people I previously envisioned tearing asunder as a righteous avenger?

These experiences created within my heart new conflicting feelings about capital punishment. They finally inspired me to take the time to learn the traditional Jewish understanding of the Biblical “eye for an eye.” I was shocked to discover that, in rabbinic parlance, this phrase referred to financial compensation for the value of those eyes. I learned that in its historical context, this lex talionis was intended to curtail, rather than augment, the collective bloodlust of expansive vengeful massacres that societies practiced in response to killings in ancient times – and still all too often today.

I also discovered the prodigious safeguards that rabbinic Judaism built into Jewish law to make the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out, lest an innocent person be executed. Simultaneously, I watched the televised saga of the execution of Troy Davis as it unfolded in Georgia in 2011, when the reality of the state killing of an innocent human being was laid bare before my eyes. The clarion call of the medieval sage Maimonides, who asserted that “it is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death,” began to reverberate in my soul. What, I rhetorically asked, would Maimonides make of the fact that – well before Eichmann – Israel had already failed this rabbinical barometer with the 1948 execution of innocent Israeli Defense Force officer Meir Tobianski, whom the Jewish State hanged and posthumously exonerated? I came to understand as well that the death penalty was racist in its origin and application, and that the notion of capital punishment as deterrence to any would-be murderers, which was a primary justification for keeping it at all in Talmudic parlance, had been disproven time and again.

Nazi Legacies and Abolition Without Exception

Still, some doubts lingered in my mind. What about the so-called “worst of the worst,” such as the Nazis and Hitler’s willing executioners, who had committed deadly acts of terror and killed members of my own family? Paradoxically, it took the shadow of the Holocaust itself to cast off my final misgivings for the light of abolition. In my ongoing study of capital punishment, I discovered to my horror that lethal injection – the primary form of execution used in the US – was a direct Nazi legacy. The Third Reich first implemented this execution method as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol, using lethal injection to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt, developed that protocol. I was appalled to learn that the kind of murderous hate that compelled the Nazis to inaugurate lethal injection in this world had overtaken my own spirit in my advocacy for death. The bloodlust that filled my heart effectively blinded me to the unconscionable Nazi legacy that I was unwittingly supporting. In this way, I had become living proof of Gandhi’s famous warning: “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” If this were not enough, I soon witnessed American states gassing prisoners to death with gas masks and chambers, with at least one state planning the use of Zyklon B, of Auschwitz infamy, to kill defenseless inmates against their will.

The long list of celebrated Jewish death penalty abolitionists includes many who lived during the Holocaust. Survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and philosopher Martin Buber both grasped the danger of giving the state the power to kill its prisoners long before I was born. As Wiesel professed: “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Wiesel even referred to Israel’s highly controversial 1962 execution of Eichmann as “an example not to be followed,” while Buber called it a great “mistake.” Other Holocaust survivors themselves, such as Nobel-prize-winning author Nelly Sachs, voiced strident opposition to Eichmann’s execution. Among the many notables who asked Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for Eichmann’s clemency were Samuel Hugo Bergmann, Nathan Rotenstreich, the poet Leah Goldberg, and members of the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University. 

Realizing that these and other Jewish and non-Jewish human rights luminaries were fully aligned with the death penalty abolition cause made my change of heart complete. The Holocaust had morphed from one of my most significant rationalizations for the death penalty to one of the most critical reasons, as I saw it, to stand against state-sponsored murder in every single case, including for the Tree of Life synagogue shooter in recent years, and now for convicted terrorists, including the perpetrators of the barbaric October 7, 2023, act of antisemitic terror and mass murder.

Notably, the death penalty law for terrorists that the Knesset recently passed evokes one other distinctly Nazi legacy. There can be no doubt that that law constitutes one of the most discriminatory pieces of execution legislation that the world has witnessed since the Nuremberg Laws of Hitler’s Third Reich. This incontrovertible truth is yet another reason why the Israeli Knesset’s recent passage of its heinous “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law effectively defiled this year’s recent observance of Yom Hashoah, the consummate Holocaust commemoration for Israel and Jews worldwide. Indeed, a far more appropriate use of the term “Nuremberg” in relation to Israel’s death penalty legislation would be to invoke these heinous Nazi laws, rather than the aforementioned trials of the same name. 

Principles Over Vengeance: The Example of Robert Badinter

Image: French Minister of Justice Roberto Badinter (1928-2024) in 2013 (Wikipedia)

Members of L’chaim and I continue to be galvanized by lofty examples of Jewish death penalty abolitionists born from the embers of the Holocaust, as we chant “Never Again!” to state-sponsored murder. One such eminent figure who rightfully received global attention upon his passing in 2024 was the former French Minister of Justice, Robert Badinter, of blessed memory. The Holocaust experience of Badinter’s family was punctuated by the unfathomable murder of his father, Simon Badinter, in the Sobibor concentration camp in 1943. Emboldened by this killing and the lessons of the unparalleled conflagration of the Shoah, Badinter went on in his illustrious legal and political career to successfully advocate for the ultimate abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. A tribute celebrating his accomplishments poignantly described that when Badinter was confronted with Klaus Barbie, the Nazi who had arrested and sent his father to his death, he proudly “stood by his opposition to the death penalty and did not wish nor seek to have his father’s killer executed. He thereby demonstrated a rare willingness to place principle over the powerful personal desire to avenge the brutal death of a beloved parent.” Badinter’s laudable attitude was reminiscent of the late Eva Mozes Kor, founder of the Candles Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, and champion of Holocaust education and the power of forgiveness.

Like Badinter, Kor, and countless family members of murder victims, I, too, have managed in my own way over time to overcome the bloodlust that had been growing like a cancer within me since before my birth. As a result, I firmly believe that others can do the same. People are capable of change, including those who have vengeance deeply rooted in their hearts, as I once did. As the Knesset decides the fate of convicted terrorists, the time is now for Israelis and Jews everywhere to unveil the trauma-laden, insidious revenge impulse that drives this death penalty bill, releasing it at last from behind its mask of false notions of deterrence. Only then will the cycle of violence and killing truly have a chance at ending. Only then can true restorative justice and reconciliation begin.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Image: The Eitz Hayim - the Tree of Life - features as the centerpeice of the official logo of "L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty," a group founded in 2020, with thousands of members in Israel and across the world.

Note: First published in the Times of Israel. 

Just as Israel’s new racist, vengeful, unjust and dangerous death penalty law defiled last week’s observance of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Remembrance Day), so, too, does it now violate Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day) commemorating the signing of the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. Israel rightfully marks this celebratory day annually with a variety of official and unofficial ceremonies and observances intended to honor the establishment of a state that its founders intended to reflect the very highest of Jewish values. This year, as Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and countless others have argued, the Knesset’s March 30 passage of the “Death Penalty for Terrorist Law” in Israel betrays the most basic of those values: Judaism’s inherent affirmation of life itself. The monstrous shadow of this abominable law profanes any festivities slated for the observation of Israel’s Independence Day beginning at sunset on April 21.

Current Supreme Court justices need only look to the words of their own renowned forefather, Justice Haim Herman Cohen (1911-2002), to see how capital punishment is anathema to Jewish - and Israeli - values this Yom Haatzmaut. At the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, Cohn was asked to help create its legal system, which he did by combining Jewish, Ottoman, Roman, and British legal traditions. An ardent opponent of capital punishment, including cases against terrorists, he resigned as state attorney to avoid having to serve as a prosecutor in the 1961 death penalty trial of Adolf Eichmann, against which he famously stated: “We cannot uproot evil by recycling it through us.” Cohn was appointed to the Israeli Supreme Court in 1960 and served for 21 years, including a period as the court’s deputy chief justice. He founded the Israeli branch of Amnesty International and was the first president of the Israeli Association of Civil Rights. His books included “The Trial and Death of Jesus” and “Human Rights and Jewish Law,” and he received the Israel Prize in 1980.

In his 1994 essay, “The Values of a Jewish and Democratic State,” Cohn famously wrote the following about the death penalty:

“The prohibition against harming human life, as a foundational principle of public law, means first and foremost the prohibition against imposing the death penalty. Human life – meaning the life of a murderer or a traitor as well. The fact that a murderer took human life does not justify taking his, neither by the state nor by anyone else…The sages of the Mishnah did everything in their power to ensure that no offender would be put to death…Not only has the death penalty ceased to be a Jewish value, but one could argue that the rejection of the death penalty has itself become a Jewish value. And this rejection is also a distinctly democratic value.”

Israeli legal analyst Yuval Yoaz recently offered some of the most salient comments on Cohn’s unambiguous words. Writing in the Times of Israel, Yoaz stated: “Ultimately…the death penalty law for Palestinians convicted of deadly acts of terror must be struck down by the High Court not just because it fails the proportionality test, but because it contradicts the very values of the State of Israel, both as a Jewish state and as a democratic one.”

Additionally, allowing executions again in the Jewish state now would only give fodder to Israel’s enemies, ultimately threatening the very national sovereignty that Yom HaAtzma’ut celebrates. Until recently, Israel stood apart in the Middle East for its virtual abolishment of the death penalty. Hamas regularly executes Palestinians in Gaza, extrajudicially and otherwise. A court operating under Yemen’s Houthi rebels recently sentenced 17 people to death for allegedly spying on behalf of Israel and others. Iran, which has carried out death sentences against Jews, has executed more than 1,600 people in 2025 alone.

By narrowing the gap between these neighbors and itself, Israel is violating its moral obligations and ethical standards. By undoing its historic commitment not to inflict the one punishment that can never be undone, it will be giving its enemies a gift.

First, changing the justice system to allow for the death penalty now provides Hamas terrorists incarcerated in Israel with a new platform for their message. Hamas will proclaim them to be martyred heroes — a new layer of disingenuous but effective propaganda.

Terrorists such as the perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre often believe that their spirits will receive rewards upon their physical death. Within that framework, lifetime incarceration is a far harsher punishment, and therefore a more effective one. Plus, the notion that executing terrorists will prevent future hostage-taking for prisoner swaps is shaky, at best. Hamas’ relationship with Israel has long been defined by retaliatory action, which means that the state killing of Hamas prisoners is likely to lead to Hamas reciprocally executing future Israeli hostages and “collaborators.” The endless cycle of violence will continue.

Since Israel seeks to be a transparent democracy that follows the rule of law, particularly within its judiciary, this legal death sentencing scheme will also prove costly in terms of public perception.

Israel’s reputation as a bastion of moral clarity in the Middle East has dramatically changed in the more than two years since the Oct. 7 attack. The devastation of the war in Gaza and the increasing violence in the West Bank have led to a substantial drop in positive perceptions of Israel worldwide. And while the Israeli judiciary has long been one of the country’s most trusted institutions, the deleterious effects of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-war proposals for a judicial overhaul mean it is no longer held in the same high regard, in Israel or the rest of the world, as it once was.

The recent passage of this law has only hastened this decline of Israel’s image.

Some of those who have argued in favor of the law have invoked the fallacy of “deterrence.” Shin Bet security service Chief David Zini even told the Security Cabinet that enacting the death penalty for terrorists who kill Israelis would help prevent future attacks.

That statement doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Recent studies have concluded that when it comes to deterrence, there is no demonstrable link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates.

But the most profound reason to reject this law comes from our own painful history as a people. Many Jews, including myself, have long objected to the death penalty in part because of the shadow of the Holocaust.

We believe, in the words of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, that “death is not the answer.” By the end of his life, Wiesel publicly said that he saw no possible exceptions to this rule: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms,” he said. “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.” Not long before his death, he again reiterated that, when it comes to capital punishment, “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

In the wake of the Holocaust and the unparalleled horrors of the 20th century, more than 70% of the nations of the world have recognized the inviolability of the human right to life, and have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

21st-century Judaism must reflect this evolution, and Israel must never cross this moral Rubicon.

The time has come for Israel to abolish the death penalty without exception. The Supreme Court’s repeal of Israel’s current death penalty law would mark the first necessary step in this existentially vital process. After debates spanning thousands of years from the ancient Sanhedrin to the present, Israel must finally do away with Wiesel’s aptly-named manmade “Angel of Death.” Instead of lifting a glass to the machinery of death, as National Security Minister Ithamar Ben Gvir nauseatingly did just before Passover, those justices should join the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in saluting “To Life!” this Yom HaAtzma’ut, and always.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Image: Husband, father, and IDF officer Meir Tobianski (1904-1948), whom Israel falsely charged with treason, wrongfully executed by hanging, and posthumously exonerated. Photo: 1947. Source: צלם לא ידוע. Author: Unknown. Permission: חלפו למעלה מ-50 שנה מאז הצילום

Note: This article was originally published in the Times of Israel as “Remembering Wrongfully Executed IDF Officer Meir Tobianski this Yom HaZikaron”

In 1963, the Israeli Knesset declared the fourth of Iyar, the day preceding Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, as  Yom Hazikaron, an official Memorial Day for those who lost their lives in the struggle that led to the establishment of the State of Israel and for all military personnel who were killed while in active duty in Israel’s armed forces. Joining these two days together conveys a simple message: Israelis owe the independence and the very existence of the Jewish state to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for it. Over the past year, according to Israeli Defense Ministry data released ahead of Yom Hazikaron on April 16, 2026, 170 soldiers were added to the total list of fallen troops in Israel’s 78-year history. Additionally, 54 disabled veterans died since last Yom Hazikaron due to injuries sustained during service, and 21 soldiers took their own lives during 2025. Zichronam Livracha - may all their memories be for a blessing and may all of their abiding neshamot/spirits be loving guides for us all now. 

This year, in the wake of the Knesset’s passage of Israel’s already infamous Death Penalty Law for Terrorists, there is one soldier in particular who must also be remembered: 44-year-old IDF officer, husband and father Meir Tobianski, Z’L, who was wrongfully executed on May 20, 1948, and posthumously exonerated by the State of Israel the following year. 

Even the staunchest supporters of Israel’s new death penalty law surely would agree that neither Judaism nor any civilized society should condone the judicial execution of an innocent human being. Jewish tradition unequivocally forbids the execution of anyone where there is any level of doubt about guilt or fairness. For this reason, rabbinic tradition put in place 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.”

Image: Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), who said “It is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.” (https://iep.utm.edu/maimonid/)

The modern State of Israel has already failed this appropriately lofty bar that Maimonides set centuries ago in the case of Officer Meir Tobianski. The legislation the Knesset passed will doubtless result in more of the same for some Palestinians. It is already obvious to rational minds that the death penalty will not deter would-be terrorists; instead, it will 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 law, among the most discriminatory of its kind since the Third Reich, will also inevitably result in the execution of innocent human beings. The fact that this travesty of “justice” already has occurred in the modern state of Israel in the case of Officer Tobianski should give pause this Yom Hazikaron to any proponent of the death penalty in Israel. 

The Wrongful Execution and Posthumous Exoneration of Officer Meir Tobianski

Many death penalty advocates cite Israel’s infamous and highly contentious 1962 execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as evidence that Israel has gotten the death penalty “right.” Too few of them realize that Eichmann represents but half of Israel’s historical execution tally. IDF Officer Tobianski, a wrongful execution victim, was the other. 

Meir Tobianski was born in 1904 in Kovna (now Kaunas). He later came to Mandatory Palestine in 1925. He was affiliated with the Haganah for most of his adult life, mainly serving concurrently with other civilian jobs while marrying and becoming a father. Tobianski began working as an engineer at the Jerusalem Electricity Company in 1947. Once the Israeli War of Independence commenced in 1948, he commanded various bases in the Jerusalem area. He and his troops swore allegiance to the just-created IDF on June 29 of that year. The next day, while in Tel Aviv on errands, he was accosted by some officers who summoned him to an urgent meeting. They took him to a building up the road back to Jerusalem and interrogated him, accusing him of transferring sensitive information to the enemy. He admitted to giving some information to British colleagues in the electricity company. At this stage, his interrogators, Issar Beeri, Avraham Kraemer (Kidron), Binyamin Gibli, and David Karon, declared themselves a military court, sentenced him to death, and had him shot the same day – June 30, 1948. His body was dumped in a nearby hole. His wife was told his fate only a few days later.

Beeri, who also played a key role in creating a military intelligence branch during the War of Independence, was eventually tried and discharged from the IDF in February 1949. He was not, however, charged with the unjust killing of Tobianski but for the murder of an Arab-Israeli named Ali Kassem, who had been a Haganah informer suspected of being a double agent. A few months later, the newly appointed Attorney General, Yaacov Shimshon Shapira, insisted Beeri be tried for the unlawful killing of Tobianski, but encountered resistance since Beeri had already been discharged from the army. Shapira insisted, however, and Beeri was convicted in an important case demonstrating the supremacy of the rule of law. For his offense, Beeri was sentenced to one day in jail, but pardoned that same evening by the president. 

Beeri’s three subordinate officers -  Avraham Kraemer (Kidron), Binyamin Gibli, and David Karon - who had served as the judges, fared even better. They were not tried because they had been following Beeri’s orders, had assumed they had the authority to act as they did, and had been convinced of Tobianski’s treason. Kraemer changed his name to Kidron and eventually rose to become the General Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Karon worked for the Mossad, spending years in Tehran. Gibli, for his part, remained in the IDF, achieved the rank of Colonel, and served as director of Military Intelligence in the 1950s.

On 1 July 1949, a year after Tobianski’s wrongful execution, the Israeli government informed his widow of his 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.”

The Death Penalty Inevitably Kills Innocents

The cautionary tale of Officer Tobianski is an unavoidable consequence of the death penalty. The unconscionable record of the killing of innocents in the United States alone serves as a damning indictment 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 States 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 enter 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. (Ohio exonerated one of these individuals, Elwood Jones, just as this author was penning the first iteration of this essay.) 

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?

Image: Jewish Florida Death row survivor Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, Z’L, right, with Abe Bonowitz, left, co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Source: Abe Bonowitz. (No Copyright.)

Israeli National Security Minister Ithamar 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 - of which I am a co-founder - 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, rushed death penalty law will sweep up some racially-targeted Palestinians who are truly engaged in self-defense, like Nethanel was in Iran, or who are otherwise innocent of charges of “terrorism.”

Image: Nethanel ben Ziona Ghahremani is a 20-year-old IranianJew scheduled for execution in Iran for an act of self-defense. Source: https://x.com/elyria2016/status/1791667687208157646 

It is not so far-fetched to imagine, as well, that Israel’s racist law will lead to the execution of innocent children. Palestinian youth are, after all, regularly implicated in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, whether accused of 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 law advocating for “swift justice” would produce.

Image: The grave of George Stinney, Jr., a Black child who South Carolina wrongfully executed in 1944 and exonerated in 2014. (Source: South Carolina Department of Archives and History)

The Legacy of Meir Tobianski on Yom Hazikaron: A Cautionary Tale

In 2021, 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 such acts of contrition must the state of Israel perform for the spirits and loved ones of future posthumous exonerees under the new death penalty law and its particularly dangerous rush to execute those it condemns? A much better way to honor the neshama/spirit of Meir Tobianski this Yom Hazikaron is to follow Maimonides’ sage counsel and absolutely eliminate the possibility of wrongful execution by abolishing the death penalty altogether. Indeed, by executing Tobianski, the modern State of Israel has already failed the appropriately lofty bar that Maimonides set centuries ago.

For the twenty-four hours of Yom Hazikaron, from sunset to sunset, all places of public entertainment (theaters, cinemas, nightclubs, pubs, etc.) are closed. The most noticeable feature of the day is the sounding of a siren throughout the country twice, during which the entire nation observes a two-minute “standstill” of all traffic and daily activities. The first siren marks the beginning of Memorial Day at 8 p.m., and the second is at 11 a.m., before the public recitation of prayers in the military cemeteries.  This ritual reflects the two sirens for which Israelis paused for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, not more than one week prior. While Yom Hashoah is dedicated to remembering the six million Jews and millions more murdered in the Holocaust, Yom Hazikaron’s focus, rightfully, is on the martyred soldiers who helped Israel rise from the ashes of that unparalleled conflagration. 

This year, however, just as the Yom Hashoah siren also necessitated reflection on how Israel’s discriminatory death penalty law perpetuated a Nazi legacy, so too must the Yom Hashoah siren awaken all who dwell in Israel to the story of Officer Meir Tobianski and the call of Maimonides. In the calculus of Eichmann versus Tobianski, Israel clearly fails the Rambam’s 1000: 1 guilt-innocence ratio, coming in at a woeful 1:1 in its 78-year history. The abiding lesson is clear: the only way to prevent innocents from falling victim to the death penalty is to abolish capital punishment altogether. May the Israeli Supreme Court now finally heed this truth with unconditional repeal of this abominable law, thereby affirming the worthy Jewish value of life for which so many courageous Israeli soldiers - like Officer Meir Tobianski, Z’L - fought and died throughout the history of the modern state of Israel.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action

Adolf Hitler’s authorization for the euthanasia program (Aktion/Operation T4), signed in October, 1939, but dated September 1, 1939. The Nazis were the first to implement lethal injection in our world. (National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, public domain)

Note: This article was first published under the title: ‘Death Should Never Be the Answer’: Why Jewish Abolitionists Oppose Israel’s Execution Law

By Cantor Michael J. Zoosman APRIL 17, 2026

Edited by: Ingrid Burke Friedman | JURIST Editorial Director

Jurist Editorial Comment: “As Jews worldwide mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, the co-founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty asks how Israel's Knesset could pass a law whose openly unequal application echoes the darkest chapters of twentieth-century legal history.”

Israel’s new death penalty law is one of the most discriminatory pieces of execution legislation that the world has witnessed since Hitler’s Third Reich. This incontrovertible truth is yet another reason why the Israeli Knesset’s recent passage of its heinous “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law on March 30 has effectively defiled this year’s observance of Yom Hashoah, the consummate Holocaust commemoration for Israel and Jews worldwide that is taking place as I write these very words. 

Let there be no doubt: the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in Israel and abroad are against the death penalty in all cases. As the co-founder of this group, I am keenly aware that this has been the case since our founding in 2020, from the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting in 2018 to the  Washington, D.C., Israeli Embassy murders in 2025, and countless other Jewish and non-Jewish men and women condemned to death across the world. We carry the torch of Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, and passionate death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), who, when asked about capital punishment, responded without equivocation that “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” L’chaim members adhere to Wiesel’s reflections on the death penalty in the wake of the Holocaust, firmly stating: “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 be an agent of the Angel of Death.” Countless other Jewish and rabbinic abolitionists since the Holocaust have shared Wiesel’s position. Many of them recognized the direct Nazi legacies of various execution methods in the United States and elsewhere, from lethal injection and gassing to the firing squad.  

Like the Dayinu song litany of the recent Passover Seder, which Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir desecrated by his pre-Pesach death penalty victory celebration in the Knesset, these reasons, in and of themselves, should be enough to give the most staunch proponent of Israel’s death penalty bill pause this Yom Hashoah. Yet, there is one other awful synchronicity that this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day also highlights. That damning factor is the fact that the egregiously discriminatory nature of Israel’s new law is one of the most prejudicial of its kind since those enacted by the Nazis. 

Discriminatory Aspects of Nazi Execution Protocols

Nazi execution laws and protocols were arguably the most racist and vile of the modern era. They functioned not as a system of justice, but rather as a tool for racial persecution, social engineering, and the systematic elimination of the entire Jewish people and other perceived enemies. The laws targeted specific groups — primarily Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, and political opponents — based on the Nazi ideology of biological racism and the concept of “racial purity.”

The infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935 formalized such discrimination. Among other deplorable rulings, these ordinances determined who was considered Jewish based on ancestry, rather than religious practice. They stripped Jews of German citizenship and made marriage or sexual relations between Jews and “Germans” a crime, often resulting in death or imprisonment in concentration camps. Specifically, the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, 15.9.1935” introduced the concept of Rassenschande (race defilement/shame). Jews were executed for having relationships with non-Jews, often under the guise of “racial pollution.” 

The Nazi regime dramatically increased the number of offenses punishable by death and applied them in a blatantly discriminatory manner. A “non-Aryan” would be executed for a crime that a “German” might only be penalized for mildly. In occupied territories, particularly Poland and the Soviet Union, German forces (such as Einsatzgruppen) carried out mass executions of Jews, Roma, and Polish intelligentsia without trial, labeling them as “anti-partisan pacification measures.”

Other discriminatory aspects of Nazi policy included Aktion T-4, the “Euthanasia” Program. In this protocol, which Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt, devised, the Nazis enacted laws under the guise of a health initiative that allowed for the systematic murder of people with physical or mental disabilities. Nazis justified this policy with the belief that such individuals were “biologically inferior” and a “burden” to the state. That thinking led to the murder of 250,000–300,000 people under T-4. The Nazis, of course, were the first in the world to use lethal injectionon prisoners, a protocol that the United States utilizes regularly for its maniacal execution machine. 

It is crucial to add that the Nazis used the Nuremberg Laws to target groups labeled “asocial” or “professional criminals,” which included homosexual men, homeless people, and “beggars.” The laws relegated these individuals to concentration camps, where death was common. Like those of Jewish heritage, these human beings’ systematic dehumanization made their gruesome fate all the more palatable for Nazi society members. In all, these laws were applied with a total disregard for traditional judicial principles, ensuring that the “Aryans” benefited while targeted groups were systematically eliminated.

Discriminatory Aspects of Israel’s ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ Law

Israel’s new death penalty law is far from the same as the above Nazi legislation. Yet, by calling for death specifically for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, while effectively excluding Israeli citizens and residents, it achieves something that few other societies have done since the time of the Nazis by entrenching an openly two-tiered system of capital “justice.” There can be no doubt that the Nazis’ targets of their dehumanization campaign were wholly innocent of any crimes. They selected their victims for who they were, not what they may or may not have done. This unequivocally contrasts with the would-be victims of Israel’s death penalty law, each of whom is ostensibly convicted of murderous terrorist actions. Still, a similar campaign of dehumanization of those ultimately condemned to death links both systems. The underlying narrative identifying perpetrators of any terrorist act as “monsters” is precisely the kind of thinking that allows an otherwise reasonable person – or “civilized society,” per Wiesel – to deem state-sponsored killing digestible. It is an insidious process that essentially removes the “human” from human rights. 

It goes without saying that the American death penalty system is also racist in practice. Cases involving white victims result in significantly more death sentences at the state and federal level than those in which victims are people of color, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. As awful as this is, at least the United States’ system maintains the pretense, albeit false, of being blind to race. Israel’s new law, like that of Nazi Germany, does nothing to hide its explicitly inequitable death sentencing system, which human rights groups and international observers have described as part of a wider system of apartheid. This willfully prejudiced legislation aligns Israel with such horrific executing regimes as Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and China, as well as Uganda, whose anti-LGBTQ+ laws L’chaim has equally condemnedover the years.

There are various key aspects of how Israel’s law is discriminatory. First and foremost is its targeted application. The law, aimed at those who kill with the “intent of harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people,” is structured to apply only to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who are tried in military courts. This leads to the second point: the law’s enabling of dual legal systems. It stipulates that military courts — which have a 96-99% conviction rate — will be the location of capital trials for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank. Conversely, civilian courts, which are not subject to this law, will serve as the venues for Israeli settlers’ trials.

The accelerated nature of certain executions constitutes the third major unjust aspect of this legislation. The law mandates a 90-day execution timeline, limits the ability to appeal, and restricts judicial discretion in sentencing, creating a more severe, faster process for Palestinians compared to any legal proceedings an Israeli might face. Last but not least, the law’s inherent exclusion of Jewish terrorists is also undeniably prejudicial. Legal experts argue the language of the law is designed to exclude Jewish terrorists who kill Palestinians from the death penalty, ensuring the punishment is reserved for Palestinian detainees. Considered together, these discriminatory factors not only condemn this law outright; they also suggest that it is an attempt to cement control over occupied territories. UN experts note that it is part of a pattern of practices that violate international law and the right to life. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various UN experts have called the law a “public display of cruelty, discrimination, and utter contempt for human rights.”

There is always a danger in invoking the death penalty in the context of Holocaust remembrance. First and foremost, one must contend with the often-cited counterexamples of the highly contentious executions of Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, as well as SS officer and Final Solution engineer Adolf Eichmann, regardless of the ultimate futility of invoking those instances as part of the death penalty debate. More insidious is the claim that reducing Holocaust memory to a discussion of the death penalty discredits the memories of Holocaust victims and survivors. L’chaim members know all too well that the reality is the diametric opposite. On the contrary, capital punishment in any form inherently disgraces and degrades the memories of Holocaust victims. It is nothing short of a slap in the face of their descendants, who comprise many of us in L’chaim, including this author. The fact that the discriminatory nature of this law hearkens back to Nazi execution laws only solidifies why Abraham J. Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action and L’chaim called this legislation a wholesale “shanda.” 

The Supreme Court of Israel now has the opportunity to repeal this monstrosity. On this Yom Hashoah, Israelis and Jews everywhere must therefore call upon the justices of that court to vote “no” to the legality of the death penalty law, and “yes” to civilized humanity, once and for all. Those justices would do well to heed the words not only of Jewish icons like Wiesel. They should also consider the sentiments of their former Israeli Supreme Court Justice and death penalty abolitionist, Haim Herman Cohen (1911-2002). Cohen famously stated of capital punishment: “We cannot uproot evil by recycling it through us.” Indeed, unconditional repeal is the only step forward now to begin to unveil the trauma-laden, insidious revenge impulse that fuels this law, releasing it at last from behind its mask of false notions of deterrence. Only then will the cycle of violence and killing truly have a chance at ending in Israel. Only then can true restorative justiceand reconciliation begin.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action