Military Ethics
Part One – Biblical Models
a)
Amalek
Deuteronomy 25
Remember what Amalek did to
you on your journey, after you left Egypt— (18) how, undeterred by fear of God,
he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down
all the stragglers in your rear. (19) Therefore, when your God grants you
safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that your God is giving
you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under
heaven. Do not forget!
b) Jericho
Joshua 6
Now Jericho was shut up tight
because of the Israelites; no one could leave or enter.) (2) GOD said to
Joshua, “See, I will deliver Jericho into your hands—its king and warriors. (3)
Let all your troops march around the city and complete one circuit of the city.
Do this six days, … Thereupon the city wall will collapse, and the troops shall
advance, every man straight ahead.” …On the seventh day, they rose at daybreak
and marched around the city, in the same manner, seven times; that was the only
day that they marched around the city seven times. (16) On the seventh round,
as the priests blew the horns, Joshua commanded the troops, “Shout! For GOD has
given you the city. (17) The city and everything in it are to be proscribed for
GOD; only Rahab the prostitute is to be spared, and all who are with her in the
house, because she hid the messengers we sent. (18) But you must beware of that
which is proscribed, or else you will be proscribed: if you take anything from
that which is proscribed, you will cause the camp of Israel to be proscribed;
you will bring calamity upon it.
וְרַק־אַתֶּם֙ שִׁמְר֣וּ מִן־הַחֵ֔רֶם פֶּֽן־תַּחֲרִ֖ימוּ וּלְקַחְתֶּ֣ם
מִן־הַחֵ֑רֶם וְשַׂמְתֶּ֞ם אֶת־מַחֲנֵ֤ה יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לְחֵ֔רֶם וַעֲכַרְתֶּ֖ם
אוֹתֽוֹ
(19) All the silver and gold
and objects of copper and iron are consecrated to GOD; they must go into the
treasury of GOD.” (20) So the troops shouted when the horns were sounded. When
the troops heard the sound of the horns, they raised a mighty shout and the
wall collapsed. The troops rushed into the city, every man straight in front of
him, and they captured the city. (21) They exterminated everything in the city
with the sword: man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey. (22) But
Joshua bade the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into that prostitute’s
house and bring out the woman and all that belong to her, as you swore to her.”
… They burned down the city and everything in it. But the silver and gold and
the objects of copper and iron were deposited in the treasury of the House of
GOD. (25) Only Rahab the prostitute and her family were spared by Joshua, along
with all that belonged to her, and she dwelt among the Israelites—as is still
the case. For she had hidden the messengers that Joshua sent to spy out
Jericho.
c) When You Go Out to War
Deuteronomy 20
(10) When you approach a town
to attack it, you shall offer it terms of peace. (11) If it responds peaceably
and lets you in, all the people present there shall serve you at forced labor. (12)
If it does not surrender to you, but would join battle with you, you shall lay
siege to it; (13) and when your God delivers it into your hand, you shall put
all its males to the sword. (15) Thus you shall deal with all towns that lie
very far from you, towns that do not belong to nations hereabout. (16) In the
towns of the latter peoples, however, which your God is giving you as a
heritage, you shall not let a soul remain alive. (17) No, you must proscribe
them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the
Hivites and the Jebusites—as your God has commanded you, (18) lest they lead
you into doing all the abhorrent things that they have done for their gods and
you stand guilty before your God.
(19) When in your war against
a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not
destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you
must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you
into the besieged city? (20) Only trees that you know do not yield food may be
destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks against the city
that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced.
Part Two - Self Defence
Exodus 22
(1) If the thief is seized
while tunnelling and beaten to death, there is no bloodguilt in that case. (2)
If the sun had already risen, there is bloodguilt in that case.
Sanhedrin 72a
מתני׳ הבא במחתרת נידון על שם סופו
פטור: גמ׳ אמר רבא
מאי טעמא דמחתרת חזקה אין אדם מעמיד עצמו על ממונו והאי מימר אמר אי אזילנא קאי
לאפאי ולא שביק לי ואי קאי לאפאי קטילנא ליה והתורה אמרה אם בא להורגך השכם להורגו
Rava says: What is the reason
for this case of the burglar? There is a presumption that a person does not
restrain himself when faced with losing his possessions, and therefore this
burglar must have said to themselves: If I go in and the owner sees me, they will
rise against me and not allow me to steal from him, and if he rises against me,
I will kill him. And the Torah stated a principle: If someone comes to kill
you, rise and kill him first.
Milchemet Mitzvah
Eruvin 45a
Rav Yehuda, said that Rav
said: ...if foreigners came with regard to lives, they may go out against them
with their weapons, and they may desecrate Shabbat due to them. And with regard
to a town that is located near the border, even if they did not come with
regard to lives, but rather with regard to matters of hay and straw, i.e., to
raid and spoil the town, they may go out against them with their weapons, and
they may desecrate Shabbat due to them
Part Four - Optional and
Compulsory Wars, Milchemet Reishut, Michemet Chovah
Mishneh Torah Hilchot Melachim
u’Milchamot 5:1
A king should not wage other
wars before a milchemet mitzvah. What is considered as milchemet
mitzvah? The war against the seven nations who occupied Eretz Yisrael,
the war against Amalek, and a war fought to assist Israel from an enemy which
attacks them.
Afterwards, he may wage a milchemet hareshut, i.e. a war fought with
other nations in order to expand the borders of Israel or magnify its greatness
and reputation.
Part Five - Between
Commonwealths
Mishnah Avot 4:1
Ben Zoma stated:
... Who is strong? One who conquers his inclination, as it says: "He who
is slow to anger is better than a strong man, and a master of his passions is
better than the conqueror of a city. (Proverbs 16)"
1 Samuel 16
[King David
was] a mighty man of valor, and a man of war.
Sanhedrin
93
"Brave
Fighter": — that he knows what to respond; "Man of War": —
that he knows how
to give and take in the war of Torah.
Shlomo
Goren, Spirit and Power in the Teachings of Judaism
The holiday of Hanukkah is also a symbol and a
model of the victory of the few over the many, in light the war’s uneven nature
and the specifically religious goals of the Greeks, for whom it was a war of
religious persecution to make them [the Jewish People] forget their Torah.
Nevertheless, the Rabbis of the Talmud did not find it appropriate to
emphasize the military victories, but rather the miracle of the oil and the menorah
... . This comes to teach us to what degree the Sages opposed war and the
people refrained from crowning the military heroes and the victors in battle.
This was done in order to negate this type of heroism which relates to a
particular individual. This is the greatest danger to the principles of faith
and to the Torah of Israel — to connect heroism and physical victory on
the battlefield to man.
Chaim Nahum Bialek 1903, City of Slaughter
Crushed in their shame, they saw it all; They did
not stir nor move; Perhaps, perhaps, each watcher had it in his heart to pray:
A miracle, O Lord,—and spare my skin this day! Those who survived this
foulness, who from their blood awoke, Beheld their life polluted, the light of
their world gone out. They crawled forth from their holes, they fled to the
house of the Lord, They offered thanks to Him, the sweet benedictory word. The
matter ends; and nothing more. And all is as it was before.
Part Six - The
Third Commonwealth
Declaration of
Independence
The Land of Israel
was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and
political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created
cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world
the eternal Book of Books.
Anita Shapiro, Ben Gurion Vehatanakh
Ben-Gurion viewed
the establishment of the Jewish state "not as the continuation of life in Warsaw,
Odessa, and Crakow, but as an essentially new beginning, although a beginning
intertwined with a distant past, the past of Joshua ben Nun, David … and the
early Hasmoneans."
Part Seven - Shlomo Goren – Largely
based on Arye Edrei
One of the
foremost rabbis to direct his attention to these questions was Rabbi Shlomo
Goren. As noted, Rabbi Goren founded the Israel Defense Forces Rabbinate and
served as its first Chief Rabbi for about two decades. He subsequently served
as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and then as Chief Rabbi
of Israel. The
scope of his scholarly work is very broad, encompassing numerous books and
hundreds of articles, many dealing with military conduct according to halakhah
(Jewish law). In his writings, he dealt with the many aspects of laws
relating to the military, from technical aspects such as the operation of a
military camp according to Jewish law to the broader legal and ethical aspects
of war.
Response to War
This book of
rulings is different than regular rulings in civil law and than all other books
of responsa. The topics in this book do not have an ongoing tradition of
rulings from generation to generation. There is nothing parallel in the Shulhan
Arukh, or in other codes of Jewish law… From the time of Bar Kochba ...
there were no laws of the military, of war, and of national security that had a
real connection to the lives of the people. For nearly 2000 years, these issues
appeared as "laws for the messiah". Even Maimonides’ Laws of [Kings
and] War[s] are not capable of guiding the establishment of military
procedure for the
modern day State
of Israel, since they are also directed to messianic times.
[With regard to]
the measure of legal or ethical responsibility that falls on officers assigned
to take charge of the welfare and security of Jewish or non-Jewish individuals,
groups, or squads ... : To what degree does the Torah view those
appointed to be indirectly responsible for crimes and transgressions committed
against the population for which they are accountable?
Edrie
The second source
that Goren turned to is the fascinating law of the eglah arufah ("Rite
upon Finding a Corpse outside Town") from Deuteronomy.64 This law
relates to situations in which a corpse is found in a field outside city limits
and it is not clear who murdered the person. The law states that the Priests
must measure which city is closest to the place where the body was found and
that the Elders of that city must slaughter a calf and declare: "Our hands
have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Forgive, Lord, your
people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and suffer not innocent blood to remain
in the midst of your people Israel." The Rabbinical Sages raised the following
obvious question:
[Question] And
would it enter our minds that the elders of the court are shedders of blood?
[Answer] Rather,
[they declare that] he did not come to our area and we allowed him to depart
without food, and we did not see him and allow him to go without escort.
This very query,
Goren argued, is indicative of the fact that the Sages viewed the City Elders
as morally responsible for everything that takes place in their territory,
including the welfare and well-being of both the general population and
strangers.
Maimonides, Laws
of Kings and Wars 6:7
When besieging a
city in order to capture it, you should not surround it on all four sides, but
only on three sides, allowing an escape path for anyone who wishes to save his
life, as it says: "And they warred against Midian as God had commanded
Moshe."—Based on tradition, they learned that thus God had commanded Moses.
Edrie
Rabbi Goren
claimed that this law is relevant to the contemporary wars of Israel [specifically
the siege on Beirut] and that it should be implemented in its literal sense.
This position has considerable ramifications.
Rabbi Goren also
referred to Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (1843-1926), the author of the Meshech
Hokhmah Commentary on the Torah, who discussed the law of leaving the
fourth side open and the question of why Maimonides did not list it as a
separate commandment. His conclusion was that allowing an escape route during a
siege is essentially a matter of strategy, i.e., that leaving an opening for
escape reduces the motivation of the enemy to engage in battle. Rabbi Goren
strongly rejected this explanation, arguing that we should not even consider
the possibility that the commandments of the Torah relate to military
tactics. It was clear to him that the rationale underlying this law is to
foster mercy for the lives of one’s enemies.
Part Eight - Kibiyeh
Jewish Reflections
on War & Peace (ahem, me)
In 1953
Palestinian terrorists launched attacks on Israel from Kibiya, a village on the
then Jordanian-controlled West Bank. The Israeli military responded
ferociously. The village was all but destroyed; many villagers were killed.
Rav Shaul Yisraeli: Takrit Kibiyeh
There is a place for acts of retribution and
revenge against the oppressors of Israel. … Those who are unruly are
responsible for any damage that comes to them, their sympathizers, or their
children. They must bear their sin.
There is no obligation to refrain from reprisal for fear that it might
harm innocent people, for we did not cause it.
They are the cause and we are innocent.
Yisraeli justified
the attack on Kibiya with reference to a classic Rabbinic concept. The
community of nations, he claimed, believed these kinds of military actions were
permissible, therefore Israel could avail herself of this international
consensus in an application of a classic Rabbinic principle dina d’malkhuta dina – the law of the land is the law.[11] ‘The foundation of dina d’malkhutah dina relates not only to what transpires within a
state, but also to international matters as is the accepted custom’, claimed
Yisraeli. Putting aside the issue of whether the international community would
have accepted the legality of actions taken in Kibiyah, Yisraeli’s claim is
that Israel should be judged by the standard of the ethics of
nations at large. If the British bomb Dresden and the Americans lay waste to Hiroshima (both examples cited in support of his position), the
Israelis can lay waste to Kibiya not only as a matter of military expediency,
but also without religious qualm.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz: After Kibiyah
We can, indeed, justify the action of Kibiyah
before "the world." [Even though] its spokesmen and leaders admonish
us for having adopted the methods of "reprisal"- cruel mass
punishment of innocent people for the crimes of others in order to prevent
their recurrence, a method which has been condemned by the conscience of the
world. We could argue that we have not behaved differently than did the
Americans, with the tacit agreement of the British, in deploying the atomic
bomb… It is therefore possible to justify this action, but let us not try to do
so. Let us rather recognize its distressing nature. There is an instructive
precedent for Kibiyeh: the story of Shekhem and Dinah. The sons of Jacob did
not act as they did out of pure wickedness and malice. They had a decisive
justification: 'Should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?!'…
Nevertheless, because of this action, their father Jacob cursed the two tribes
for generations.
There is , however, a specifically Jewish aspect to the Kibiyeh
incident, not as a moral problem but an authentically religious one. We must
ask ourselves: what produced this generation of youth, which felt no inhibition
or inner compunction in performing the atrocity when given the inner urge and
external occasion for retaliation? After all, these young people were not a
wild mob but youth raised and nurtured on the values of a Zionist education,
upon concepts of the dignity of man and human society. The answer is that the
events at Kibiyeh were a consequence of applying the religious category of
holiness to social, national, and political values and interests - a usage
prevalent in the education of young people as well as in the dissemination of
public information. The concept of holiness - the concept of the absolute which
is beyond all categories of human thought and evaluation - is transferred to
the profane. From a religious standpoint only God is holy, and only His
imperative is absolute. All human values and all obligations and undertakings
derived from them are profane and have no absolute validity. Country, state,
and nation impose pressing obligations and tasks which are sometimes very
difficult. They do not, on that account, acquire sanctity. In our discourse and
practice we have uprooted the category of holiness from its authentic location
and transferred it to inappropriate objects, thus incurring all the dangers
involved in such a distorted use of the concept.
Part Eight – Reprisals/Redeeming Hostages – And Fear
Genesis 14
They also took Lot, the son of
Abram’s brother, and his possessions, and departed; for he had settled in
Sodom. When Abram heard that his
kinsman’s [household] had been taken captive, he mustered his retainers and
went in pursuit. At night, he and his servants deployed against them and
defeated them; and he pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus.
Genesis 15
And God said to Abram, “Fear
not.”
Bereishit Rabba 44:4
Rabbi Levi said two
[interpretations],
Rabbi Levi said: Because our
forefather Abraham was fearful, and saying: ‘Perhaps those people whom I
killed, there was among them one righteous man, or one God-fearing man.
Rabbi Levi said another interpretation: Because our forefather Abraham was
fearful and saying: ‘Perhaps those kings whom I killed, their sons will
assemble multitudes and they will come and wage war against me.’
Part Nine - Peace
Megillah
18a
And
why did they make ‘sim shalom’ - ‘set
peace’ the last blessing of the Amidah, after the Priestly Blessing, as it
says, ‘And the Priests will set My name on the Children of Israel and I will
bless them.’ (Numbers 6) And the blessing of the Holy Blessed One is peace, as
it says, ‘GOD will bless God’s people with peace’ (Psalm 29)
Ritba Megilla 18a d.v. U-Mah
And
this is what we find in the Midrash, ‘the seal of every blessing is Peace. And
this is what was prescribed for the end of the blessings of the evening shema, which ends ‘who spreads out a
tabernacle of peace.’... And the blessings of the meal also end with Peace,
‘And “GOD will bless God’s people with peace” (Psalm 29) and also the Kaddish
[which ends “May the Maker of Peace in the Highest, make peace for us.”]
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