Sadistic Death Viewing Chamber Puts Israel Squarely on the Wrong Side of History

The thousands of members of the group  “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” of which I am the co-founder, wholeheartedly condemn the sadistic death chamber that Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has recently unveiled. On August 18, 2026, the Jerusalem Post reported the construction of a hanging facility with viewing booths for terror victims and their families to witness the hanging of convicted terrorists. Visitor permits will be available for members of bereaved families. Ben-Gvir’s office justified this by stating that this practice is “customary in many countries.” To mark the occasion, Ben-Gvir stated: “I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons – we kept it. I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law – we did. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.” He later added: “We are making history. Our terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging.”

Israel is indeed making history – by being squarely on the wrong side of it. Ben-Gvir’s comment that the witnessing of execution is “customary in many countries” is misrepresentative at best. It may very well be that those barbaric nations that still carry out hangings do have witness chambers. The truth of the matter, however, is that in this 21st century, the vast majority of nations across the globe have abolished the death penalty. The sadistic death chamber that Ben-Gvir is creating is a damning symbol of the current government of Israel’s ongoing march of folly toward medieval vulgarity. This charged moment demands 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 on a damning list of uncivilized, executing regimes across the globe.

​To highlight Israel’s backward trajectory, it so happens that just last week Lebanon abolished the death penalty, with Hezbollah as the only Lebanese party opposed to it, thereby aligning Israel with its sworn enemy on the issue of capital punishment. 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 condemn Ben-Gvir’s death viewing chamber. They should realize that executions – still – are not the answer today, and never should be.

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Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC

Co-Founder: L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action