Capital punishment in Israel

Capital punishment in Israel is allowed only during wartime and only for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, treason, and certain crimes under military law. The current Arab-Israel conflict is considered a war, and the commission of such crimes can technically result in the death penalty, though this has not occurred.

Israel inherited the British Mandate of Palestine code of law, which included the death penalty for several offenses, but in 1954 Israel abolished the penalty for murder. Although a legal option under law, Israel does not use the death penalty. The last execution was carried out in 1962, when Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann was hanged for genocide and crimes against humanity. The last death sentence in Israel was handed down in 1988, when John Demjanjuk was sentenced to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity; his sentence (and conviction) was subsequently overturned. No death sentences have been sought by Israeli prosecutors since the 1990s.

Israel's rare use of the death penalty may in part be due to Jewish religious law.Biblical law explicitly mandates the death penalty for 36 offenses, from murder and adultery to idolatry and desecration of the Sabbath. However, in ancient Israel, the death penalty was rarely carried out. Jewish scholars since the beginning of the common era have developed such restrictive rules to prevent execution of the innocent that the death penalty has become de facto abolished. Moses Maimonides argued that executing a defendant on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until we would be convicting merely "according to the judge's caprice". His concern was maintaining popular respect for law, and he saw errors of commission as much more threatening than errors of omission.Conservative Jewish religious leaders and scholars believe that the death penalty should remain unused, even in extreme cases such as political assassination.

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