Geoffrey Alderman v David Goldberg
Monday 12 January 2009 12.30 GMT
Courtesy Of The Guardian
Geoffrey Alderman to David Goldberg
Dear Rabbi Goldberg
I have been invited to consider the present Israeli action in Gaza from a religious perspective.
The Halachah is crystal clear. It is entirely legitimate to kill a rodef – that is to say, one who endangers the life of another – and this is true, incidentally, even if the rodef has not yet actually taken another life. So the Judaism that I practise permits what is generally referred to as "pre-emptive" military action.
In this particular case, the ruling power, Hamas, has advertised (in its charter) that its mission is to kill Jewish people. Therefore every member and supporter of Hamas may be considered a rodef.
What precise kind of pre-emptive military action might one take? A great deal has been said about "proportionality". This may be a Christian idea, but thankfully it is certainly not a Jewish one.
In 1999 a Norfolk farmer shot dead a thief whom he had caught attempting to burgle his house at night. The farmer was – most unjustly as I'm sure you'll agree – sent to prison because he was deemed to have used 'disproportionate' force. But the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 22) tells us that a householder who kills a burglar in the dead of night is guiltless since the presumption is that a thief who enters premises at night would not hesitate to take a life in pursuit of his criminal ends. (Once again note the implicit reference to pre-emptive action.)
Sincerely
Professor Geoffrey Alderman
David to Geoffrey
Dear Professor Alderman,
Thank you for sending me your comments from a Jewish religious perspective about the current Israeli action in Gaza. I shall reply to them seriatim.
i) I have no argument with your explanation about the status of the rodef in Jewish law (the Halachah) and the permissibility of taking pre-emptive action against him, except to add that the biblical law should be viewed in the context of a desert society and blood feuds between individuals and clans. That is why I disagree with your contention that in the context of modern Gaza this can be extended to include every member and supporter of Hamas – about 1 million people according to the election results. Or would you advise every innocent civilian and child to wear a large placard visible to Israeli jets proclaiming "Don't blame me, I voted for Fatah"?
ii) I am surprised at your dismissiveness of the Christian idea of proportionality that "thankfully ... is certainly not a Jewish one." The "just war" doctrine, in which proportionality plays a major part, strikes me as a laudable attempt by medieval Christian theologians to try and control the worst excesses of war. There was no Jewish equivalent only because Jews had possessed neither country nor army since since 135 CE, so the moral issues were academic. Even so, I would argue that proportionality is indeed a Jewish idea, going right back to the biblical legislation about "an eye for an eye". As we know, it was always interpreted by Jewish law to mean monetary compensation to the value of the damaged eye, tooth, limb, etc – very precise proportionality indeed.
iii) I do agree with your comments about the convicted Norfolk farmer, but then so did most of sensible public opinion, which is why he was speedily released.
Sincerely,
Rabbi David J Goldberg
Geoffrey to David
Dear Rabbi Goldberg
i) I suspect that you fail to appreciate the full meaning of rodef in this context. As you know, the source for this is the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 73a. It seems clear to me from a commonsense reading of this passage that the concept of a rodef encompasses those who advocate or incite the murder of Jews. Every Gazan citizen who voted for Hamas must – surely – come within this category, because Hamas as a movement is explicitly committed to the destruction, not simply of Israel, but of the Jewish people.
ii) The deaths of "innocents" is no doubt very regrettable. If Hamas really cared about this situation, it would capitulate. But, unfortunately, it shows no signs of doing so. Indeed, it regards the deaths of "innocents" in this conflict as a prize in itself, because (according to its perverse logic) in this way even children and old people can play their part in the global jihad that Hamas craves. As Hamas spokesman Fathi Hamad said on Al-Aqsa TV last year, what has been created is "a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine ... we desire death as you desire life." So be it. (Of course using human shields is itself a war crime, but, curiously, nobody seems much bothered on that account.)
iii) I am not the slightest bit interested – as a practitioner of religious Judaism – in the development of a Christian position on "proportionality". And I have to say that you reference to the Lex Talionis seems to me equally irrelevant. Israel's military action against Gaza has nothing to do with retributive justice – in any case a war of vengeance is prohibited. But it has everything to do with a milchemet mitzvah – a war to save Israel from an enemy that has attacked it. The Halachic position here (see Maimonides, Hilkhot Melakhim – The Laws of Kings – 5:1) could not be clearer, could it?
Sincerely
Professor Geoffrey Alderman
David to Geoffrey
Dear Professor Alderman,
i) Having re-read Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 73a, I suspect that any failure on my part to appreciate what you deduce to be its full meaning is due to the radically different conclusions we draw from its argument about the rodef. As in Blake's couplet, we "Both read the Bible day and night/But thou read'st black where I read white."
In my previous response I agreed with you about the definition of the rodef and the permissibility of taking preventive action against him. Applying the Talmudic principle of reasoning a minori ad majus, I would even concede that this could also be interpreted to apply to those Gazans who actively aid Hamas by ferrying in weapons from Egypt, providing cover and rocket launching sites, etc. But my imagination – let alone a "commonsense reading of this passage" – boggles at your conclusion from it that therefore every citizen who voted for Hamas is a legitimate target. According to most commentators, the popular vote for Hamas was a protest against Fatah corruption and incompetence, not an endorsement of its mad fantasies about destroying Israel and all Jews.
ii) Here we are in the field of war propaganda, where Truth is always the first victim. That is why I am less inclined than you to take the dark ravings of Hamas spokesman Fathi Hamad as representative of general Palestinian thinking or mainstream Sunni theology. And I would simply point out that the accusation of the enemy using human shields has been bandied about at least since the 1870 Franco-Prussian war (which doesn't make it any less likely or less heinous).
iii) You may not be interested in the Christian doctrine of "proportionality", but had space permitted I would have added in my previous reply that Israel, since becoming a sovereign state with its own army, has paid great attention to just war theory; hence its concept – sadly tarnished in recent years – of "purity of arms" in warfare. And I recall Abba Eban, Israel's former Foreign Minister, once telling me that he always insisted that his staff should read Michael Waltzer's book Just and Unjust Wars as a moral guide to diplomacy.
Finally, I disagree with you that Israel's present incursion against Hamas counts as a war of self-defence (milchemet mitzvah) in which everyone is obliged to serve, as opposed to a voluntary war (milchemet ha-reshut) in which certain categories are exempted. The fact that the Israeli government has not ordered a total mobilisation is conclusive proof that the state is not in peril from Hamas, although we both concur that its rocket attacks against southern Israel can not be tolerated or allowed to continue.
With kind regards,
David J Goldberg
Geoffrey to David
Dear Rabbi Goldberg
You may wish to regard the popular vote for Hamas as a protest against Fatah corruption and incompetence, rather than an endorsement of its "mad fantasies about destroying Israel and all the Jews". I do not. May I remind you that not so long ago many Jewish commentators – including rabbis – chose to regard the popular vote for the German Nazi party as a protest against Weimar corruption and incompetence, rather than an endorsement of its mad fantasies about destroying the Jews? Almighty God alone knows how disastrously wrong they were!
I regard it as a religious obligation not to make this mistake.
The fact that the Israeli government has not ordered a general mobilisation does not vitiate my categorisation of the present IDF operation in Gaza as an obligatory war of self-defence. Frankly, in view of the universally acknowledged deaths and injuries (to Jews) caused by Hamas rockets and mortars, I am astonished that anyone should argue otherwise. In my previous email I deliberately avoided any discussion of a milchemet reshut for this very reason. No eligible person, in Israel, is "exempt'"from military service in Gaza. Rather, it is the prerogative of the ruling power – the government of the state – to decide who, amongst those eligible, will actually be called upon to serve, just as a commander in the field will decide which units will engage the enemy, and which will be held back, in reserve.
If the Hamas government of Gaza had engaged only in rhetoric – urging that Jews be killed but not actually killing any Jews – the view you put forward might be halachically valid (though there is room for a strong counter-argument here, in terms of pre-emptive action). But the fact is, Jews have been killed, by the government of Gaza and at its instigation.
Sincerely
Professor Geoffrey Alderman
David to Geoffrey
Dear Professor Alderman,
As this is to be our last exchange, let me respond briefly to your comments about Hamas and the Nazi party, and what constitutes "an obligatory war of self-defense", and then summarise, from my point of view, where we differ.
No two historical analogies are ever totally precise. Nevertheless, comparing Hamas to Hitler is as emotively exaggerated and logically fallacious as likening the current Israeli offensive in Gaza to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Catholic cardinal recently did. Of course a close, deterrent watch has to be kept on Hamas and its potential for translating wild rhetoric into action; but to seek to justify Israel's actions by always referring back to the Holocaust is to demean the memory of the worst disaster in Jewish history and the lessons we, and the rest of the world, should learn from it.
Your argument that Israel is currently engaged in an obligatory war of self-defence won't wash. The fact is that Israel's wars of 1948 (war of independence), 1967 (six day war) and 1973 (Yom Kippur war) were indeed for survival. Starting with the 1982 invasion of Lebanon – which was, by then-prime minister Begin's own admission a "war of choice" – Israel's subsequent campaigns and incursions have all been by choice – ie to try to destroy an enemy (the PLO, Hezbollah, Hamas) by force when diplomacy has failed or not been seriously tried.
You do concede that had Hamas simply engaged in rhetoric and not actually killed Jews in its attacks, then my view that this is a voluntary war by Israel "might be halachically valid". But since Israelis have died (13 so far, four civilians and nine soldiers, against nearly 900 Gazan men, women and children), you argue, by inference from the law of the rodef, that this makes every Hamas supporter complicit and a legitimate target.
You dismissed the just war doctrine of proportionality as being "a Christian idea" but "certainly not a Jewish one". When I countered with the biblical "eye for an eye", you rejected it as "irrelevant". I could have cited instead Abraham's argument with God about Sodom: "Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?" (Genesis 18:23), but presumably you would have rejected that too, because according to your reading of the law of the rodef everyone who voted for Hamas in the last election is automatically guilty.
You cited the great commentator Moses Maimonides on the distinction between obligatory and voluntary wars. I have already explained why I do not accept your conclusion therefrom that this is an obligatory war of self-defence.
But since Maimonides is indeed the locus classicus for a comprehensive summary of Jewish law regarding warfare, perhaps I can remind you that he also furnishes such idealistic laws as not cutting down fruit-bearing trees to make battering rams, and only besieging a city on three sides, so that its inhabitants have an avenue of escape. As you know, all of this comes under the general rabbinic prohibition of bal tashchit – "Do not destroy" (wantonly and excessively).
What, I wonder, would Maimonides have made of the Israeli army's bombardment of so many homes, schools and places of shelter? Or the deaths of so many innocents, which are inevitable, no matter how much care is taken, in the overcrowded slums of Gaza?
Peace is Judaism's most prized ideal. Rather than debating the finer points of Jewish law, perhaps you and I should both acknowledge that what is now happening to all Gazans in the cause of legitimately safeguarding Israeli citizens from Hamas rockets demonstrates Israel's well-known propensity for wielding an iron fist in an iron glove, but brings no credit to Judaism's ethical teachings.
With regards,
David J Goldberg
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