A Yom Hazikaron Reminder that the Death Penalty Kills the Innocent

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.”

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 execution protocols the world has seen 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........

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