Tuesday
Aug012006
No innocents in Qana, say rabbis
Issandr El Amrani
I await the worldwide indignation at this form of religious barbarism with trepidation:
Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocentsMaybe they can have a Reformation...
The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."
All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said.
Reader Comments (9)
George Bush has more innocent blood on his hands since the beginning of his term in office to the present than Richard Nixon ever had with all the victims of the Vietnam War. I am praying for a shift in government come election day this November in the USA.
I am ashamed of the leadership majority of my country. If only he possessed one tenth of the wisdom of King Solomon!
Why...is all this happening to children? What can we do to stop all the killing of innocent souls. War or no War.......children are innocent little angels who don't deserve to die especially under these circumstances :(
I asked a learned colleague about this Yesha Rabbinical Council and he said they were fairly fundie, "the organized rabbinnical voice of the religious settler movement," were "close to gush emunim, have called on soldiers to refuse orders, on an individual level some of them are probably quite sympathetic to Yigal Amir's assassination of rabin...[however] many of them have state jobs or sinecures, they speak in modern hebrew and in a cultural idiom that is easily accessible, use state media as well as settler-affiliated media, etc., many of them run schools that do religious training for army cadets in the 'hesder' programme, etc..."
Oh, and the the next time someone parrots the line about Reformation being the answer, send them off to read Walzer's Revolution of the Saints. That Calvin was pretty bloodthirsty.
I just read Philip Ball's biography of Paracelsus, "The Devil's Doctor", which is set at the time of all the protestant founders -- Luther, Calvin, Zwingli etc. They're all madmen! People should reallly know more about the reformation when they mention it. Luther in particular strikes me as quite the fundamentalist idiot.
Not knowing anything, of course, about the rules of war in Judaism, I have no idea how reliable this is or is not, but I think the quote rather apt to the current situation none-the less:
"Since the Jewish tradition accepts that civilians (and soldiers who are surrendering) are always entitled to flee from the scene of the battle, it would logically follow that all who remain voluntarily are classified as combatants, since the opportunity to leave is continuously present. Particularly in combination with Joshua's practice of sending letters of warning in advance of combat, this legal approach limits greatly the role of the doctrine of "innocent civilian" in the Jewish tradition. Essentially, the Jewish tradition feels that innocent civilians should do their very best to remove themselves from the battlefield and those who remain are not so innocent"
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/war3.html
Assuming a corridor has actually been established, of course...
One question I have with reference to the above article is that I have heard causally that killing of non-Jews is not considered murder. So I do not know how that fits in either
But I would have been surprised if there were not rules of war in traditional Judaism
Which makes me wonder what sort of "fundamentalist" this fellow might be, though as the article notes and assuming it accurate even in traditional Judaism the category of non-combatant civilian is rather limited
Mas - here are some references passed on to me by aforementioned Learned Colleague (less law and more contemporary history/politics):
War in Jewish Tradition
E Inbar - The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 1987
The Changing Jewish Discourse on Armed Conflict: Themes and Implications
Stuart A. Cohen - Terrorism and Political Violence, Volume 17, Number 3 / Autumn 2005
To mas:
That sounds like a really good idea, however, have you taken in concideration all the shrapnel on the territory everywhere? What are children supposed to do? Fly out in an aircraft? Gimme a break........ You would be lucky, in the first place to find gas, not to mention a car... how the heck are you supposed to "Get Out"?????
SP, thanks for the references
CO, I believe you have misinterpreted my comments.
I was utlilizing some mild sarcasm
I do not think simply "giving warning" and then assuming any individual left should be taken as combatant or "not so innocent" is legitimate, but I had not thought I needed to spell that out either
It may be slightly off the point, but I checked various news networks and missed the bit where Hizbullah pre-empted rocket strikes of Israel with leaflet drops advising people flee in anticipation of strikes. And did Hizbullah attack infrastructure to prevent military resupply and movement - oh yes, that's right - they just light the fuse at the nearest civilian suburb and say "God Willing, many Jews will die!" while the Israeli pilots and artillerists plan, target and fire and if civilians are struck say "What did we do? Will God and other people understand we made a mistake?". THAT is the moral difference.