On Tuesday, August 11, after 22 years without an execution in Lebanon, its Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, making it the first Arab country in the Middle East to scrap capital punishment formally.
The new law replaces death sentences with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labor.
And what was the only party on record in that country to oppose abolition? It should not be surprising to hear that the answer is Hezbollah, which argued that the death penalty deterred crime.
What might be surprising is that Hezbollah and the government of Israel, its sworn enemy, find themselves aligned on this position. Both erroneously subscribe to the “deterrence delusion” that they use as an excuse for vengeance, which is ultimately the true reason for seeking capital punishment.
The thousands of members of the group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” of which I am the co-founder, wholeheartedly celebrate this remarkable abolitionist achievement for Lebanon, and for civilized humanity.
Israel’s juxtaposition with Lebanon over capital punishment forces it to reckon with the extent to which its recent expansion of the death penalty places it squarely on the wrong side of history.
Lebanon is but the latest country to see the light of abolition. Other newcomers to abolition are Ghana (2023), Antigua and Barbuda (2023), Papua New Guinea (2022), Sierra Leone (2021), and Kazakhstan (2021). Well over 70% of the world’s nations have now abolished the death penalty either in law or in 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: abolitionist in practice. That reality is no more. Now that Israel’s first death penalty law has 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 600th execution of the modern era last week, Florida’s double execution day last month, or the triple execution day last Thursday across the USA, while once unthinkable to many Israelis, will soon be mirrored across Jerusalem.
In a horrific synchronicity that highlights Israel’s downfall from international grace, just days after Lebanon’s announcement, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled a sadistic death viewing chamber for hangings scheduled to take place on Israel’s newly minted death row.
How can it be that Israel has descended so far into the moral abyss? One simple answer is the natural human urge for revenge.
In a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed, David S. Levine responded to an essay that I penned in which I had accused Israel of using the death penalty as a means of enacting vengeance for the incomparable horrors of October 7, 2023. Levine’s retort, rather than denying this charge, openly acknowledged that the death penalty is indeed “unapologetically vengeance,” which he then proceeded to justify.
L’chaim has outlined ad nauseam why the insidious vengeance that is capital punishment is inherently wrong. It would be nonsensical to reiterate this reality to anyone who truly feels that vengeance is appropriate human behavior.
Instead, it might behoove death penalty supporters like Levine to consider the shameful company of executing nations that Israel now keeps in the wake of the two barbaric execution-related bills that a majority of Knesset members passed into law earlier this year.
Still not the answer
In 2025, a total of 17 nations globally carried out executions. Using the most recent available data from the last calendar year, just published in the Amnesty International Global Report: Death Penalty and Executions 2025, 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.
Among nations that openly execute human beings, however, it is Iran, another prime nemesis of Israel, that 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 recent global spike in state-sanctioned killings, and has drawn severe condemnation from the United Nations and human rights organizations. Already in 2026, according to a New York Times report, “more than 800 executions had been verified this year” in Iran, which hanged 71 human beings in June alone. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen also feature on the list of worldwide executing regimes.
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 600 in the modern era.
The Gaza Strip came in just after the US in 2025, when Hamas executed a total of 33 men. Other regular annual killing states include Syria, Somalia, Singapore, Kuwait, Egypt, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Oman, and Bangladesh.
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 is an abject abomination – whether conducted in secret in China, for all to celebrate in Iran or Gaza, behind a sterilized needle in the US, or now to further the “deterrence delusion” in Israel.
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 encapsulated 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 vengeance who support these new laws in Israel should heed Wiesel’s message – and follow Lebanon’s example. They should realize that executions – still – are not the answer today, and never should be.
The author is a cantor (MSM, BCC), a member of Death Penalty Action’s advisory committee, and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.