Even worse, the Gush Etzion villages were never relieved or reinforced. Without reinforcements, those villages eventually fell to the onslaught of the Arab marauders and the regular Jordanian army (the Arab Legion). When Kfar Etzion, the largest of the villages, fell, virtually the entire Jewish civilian population was massacred, 250 people in all. Only three Jews survived. The residents of the other three villages were luckier – after their surrender the Jordanians took them prisoner and later released them.
Jews had long engaged in sterile, scholarly debate over military behavior without the hazard of being mugged by reality. Prior to the struggle for Israel’s independence, Jews hadn’t run an army of their own (as opposed to participating as soldiers in armies of other countries) since the seventh century, when a small Jewish militia aided the Persian invaders attempting to drive out the Byzantine occupiers of Palestine.
But then, in the late 1940’s, Jews were suddenly confronted with the necessity of propounding ethical rules for dealing with real-world military dilemmas.
There are lessons to be learned from the massacre of the Gush Etzion Thirty-Five. The only way to avoid undertaking military actions that might possibly result in the death of innocent non-combatants is to surrender and capitulate. Squeamishness in the midst of battle always results in far worse bloodshed.
Rabbinic tradition teaches that those who are compassionate in situations where cruelty is called for will end up being cruel in situations where compassion is called for.
Our Sages could have thought a thing or two to the armchair critics of Israel’s targeted assassinations and other military actions, and to the practitioners of recreational compassion who love to whine about the “brutality” of the American military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
