Lebanon Abolishes the Death Penalty, as Israel and Hezbollah Align Supporting It

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.

Hezbollah argued that abolishing the death penalty might excessively reduce sentences or dilute accountability for individuals convicted of serious crimes such as bombings, terrorism-related offenses, and attacks on the Lebanese Armed Forces. In other words, they 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 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 in the wrong side of history. This charged moment demands for a more detailed explanation of precisely why this is the case.

The shameful company of executing nations that Israel now keeps

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. Mr. 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 nauseum 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 Mr. 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. These laws place Israel squarely on a damning list of uncivilized, executing regimes across the globe.

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). Over 70% of the world’s nations have 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 six hundredth execution of the modern era last week, Florida’s double execution day last month, or the triple execution day that just this past Thursday across the USA, 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 the 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.

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. According to the US-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, China executed at least 8,000 people per year. Of note, Yemen, Vietnam, and North Korea, among others, also keep their execution tallies a secret.

Among nations that openly execute human beings, however, it is Israel’s nemesis, Iran, 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, 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. In 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. Meanwhile, 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 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.

Elsewhere, according to the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), Somalia recorded at least 24 executions in 2025, and Singapore executed 17 individuals in 2025, the highest annual number of executions in that country since 2003. 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. South Sudan, Afghanistan, Oman, and Bangladesh also regularly appear on the annual list of executing nations. (Notably, Japan carried out one execution in 2025.)

Like China, Syria – a regular, frequent offender –  also maintained no official or exact total number of judicial executions or extrajudicial killings in 2025. Human rights organizations and the United Nations documented thousands of summary executions and sectarian-motivated killings throughout the year. Known localized incidents included the execution of an estimated 1,400 to 1,500 people, primarily of the Alawite minority, and 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, among other incidents.

The death penalty places Israel on the wrong side of history

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 7, 2023 attacks, 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.

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 USA, or now to further the “deterrence delusion” in Israel.

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 will most certainly incite and invite more shaheeds– martyrs – to attack Israel. The death penalty also violates the human right to 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 – now that 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. They will neatly fit 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 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.

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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The above post was published in The Jurist on August 20, 2026, and is also found at this link.