We, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” across Israel and the world, lament the fact that the two barbaric execution-related bills that a majority of Knesset members have recently passed into law place Israel on a damning list of uncivilized, executing regimes across the globe. It is well known that over 70% of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty in law or 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 of abolitionist in practice. That reality is no more. Now that Israel’s first death penalty law has just 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, 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 this 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, it is apparent that 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, at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China. Since 2006, the Chinese government has taken effective measures to limit the use of the death penalty, proclaiming that it is doing this to abolish it completely. Of note, Yemen, Vietnam, and North Korea, among others, also keep their execution tallies a secret.

Among nations that openly execute human beings, Iran often 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 global spike in state-sanctioned killings, and has drawn severe condemnation from the United Nations and human rights organizations.

A renewed use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses and sweeping national security charges largely drove the massive increase. At least 795 people were executed for drug-related offenses, often following grossly unfair trials in Revolutionary Courts. Executions tied to politically motivated charges spiked significantly, with dozens........

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