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 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?

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.”

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.

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 at 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

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)