Categories: Guest Blog / Shalom Pollack Tours

Purity of Arms

|

March 28, 2016, 12 PM ET

Print

As we celebrate Purim, the holiday of redemption from a holocaust and revenge against our enemies, terrorists attacked a soldier in Hevron. Thankfully, the soldier was only slightly wounded before his buddies took out the two assailants. Quite appropriately, the annual Purim costume parade began just where our enemies were felled. Flash: One of the attackers was down when a soldier finished him off. The self-appointed judges of what it moral, humane and authentically Jewish are raising the usual howl. That soldier and others who were in the area are in deep trouble today. How do these concepts apply to us and our situation? What does the Torah say about what is humane and authentically Jewish? After over two years of incessant Arab terror and Israeli restraint, with hundreds of Jewish victims, the IDF finally was given the green light. In 2002, during the "Defensive Shield" operation (launched to uproot the Arafat terrorist infrastructure built since Oslo - 1993), IDF troops halted before a building in Jenin. Jenin was a viper's nest of terror and terror support A building was reported to be occupied by a bunch of terrorists with the possibility of enemy civilians inside The options were: 1- Shell the building 2- Bomb the building from the air. 3 - Send in our men to seek and destroy the enemy while making every effort to avoid civilian causalities.. If it were your son, brother or father waiting outside the building,, which would you prefer? The "purity of arms" policy that the IDF is so proud of, determined that only the last choice was an option; and so a dozen Jewish families were destroyed. But the good news? A dozen Arab families were not. We won the moral victory; The question is, whose morality? In the latest Gaza round we lost soldiers following the same IDF moral rule book. And didn't the world applaud our morality? This has everything to do with Purim and what our tradition teaches us about morality and how to fight an hostile enemy. In the Megilla Mordechai instructs the Jews to:

(Chapter 8:11) "gather in every city to all the forces that would assault them(the enemy) along with their children and women.."
Chapter 8:13) "..the Jews should be ready to avenge themselves on their enemies.."
(Chapter 8:16) "The Jews had light and gladness , and joy and honor.."
(Chapter 9:8)"And the Jews smote all their enemies..and treated those that hated them as they pleased.."
(Chapter 9:16) ..seventy five thousand were slayed on that day..

Mmmm, doesn't sound like the IDF "purity of arms.." In the entire history of the IDF, approximately 85,00 enemy have been killed. Chief of Staff, Gen Eisenkot recently said," the IDF does not operate according to slogans such as (the biblical injunction) "Rise up to kill those who come to kill you" Defence Minister Ayalon said , "it is forbidden to forget our "humanity" and get out of control just because our blood boils.." We need to decide what is the moral high ground here:

Is it moral to send our people in harms way so as to keep the enemy out of it?
Or is that precisely the pinnacle of immorality?
And who is "the enemy" according to our tradition and Torah?

Our greatest leaders such as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David never sacrificed our people to protect any member of the enemy nations they fought--And they new Torah and Jewish values fairly well. Reminds me a little of how the allies fought the war against Germany and Japan... How about this: the enemy should be aware that if he plans to strike a Jew, he will never survive the attempt.. Maimonides, in the Laws of Kings, teaches that in a war that is thrust upon Israel, there is no distinction between combatants and enemy civilians. The soldier who finished-off the snake last week, has more Jewish morality in his little trigger finger than all the IDF manuals based on anything but Jewish morality, tradition and law. I fear we are about to witness once again how, "he who is merciful to the wicked will be wicked to the merciful"