Oded J.K Faran and Walter E. Block
Recent months have witnessed an unusual phenomenon: rabbis from across the Jewish denominational spectrum, including Reform, Conservative, and even Orthodox leaders, publicly criticizing aspects of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. At a time when Israel faced, still faces, existential threats on multiple fronts, this religious dissent demands examination.
The criticism has been substantial. Eighty Orthodox rabbis recently declared: “We affirm that Hamas’s sins and crimes do not relieve the government of Israel of its obligations to make whatever efforts are necessary to prevent mass starvation. Orthodox Jewry, as some of Israel’s most devoted supporters, bears a unique moral responsibility.”
Rabbi Yosef Blau of Yeshiva University added: “The responsibility and the lack of concern that Hamas has for the health and welfare of its own people does not free Israel from having responsibility for the destruction that it has caused.”
What drives this religious criticism during one of Israel’s most challenging hours?
The Theological Imperative
Many of these rabbis invoke fundamental Jewish principles of preserving human life (pikuach nefesh) and preventing unnecessary suffering. They argue that Jewish law creates obligations that transcend military necessity, believing that even justified warfare must be conducted within moral boundaries derived from religious tradition.
This position reflects a longstanding tension in Jewish thought between national survival and ethical conduct. These rabbis contend that Israel’s Jewish character depends not merely on military victory, but on adherence to Jewish values throughout the conflict.
Strategic Concerns
Some religious leaders express worry about long-term consequences for Israel’s security and international standing. They fear that certain military approaches, while tactically sound, may prove strategically counterproductive by alienating potential allies or undermining Israel’s moral authority.
From this perspective, criticism serves Israel’s interests by encouraging policies that maintain both military effectiveness and international legitimacy.
The Prophetic Tradition
These rabbis may also see themselves fulfilling the classical prophetic role of speaking truth to power. In Jewish tradition, religious leaders have historically challenged rulers when they believed fundamental principles were at stake, viewing such criticism as loyalty to higher ideals rather than disloyalty to the state.
Understanding the Opposition
Critics of rabbinic dissent raise valid counterpoints. They argue that public criticism during wartime undermines Israeli morale and provides propaganda material for enemies. Internal disagreements, they contend, should be handled privately while maintaining unity against existential threats.
Others question whether religious leaders possess the military and intelligence expertise necessary to evaluate complex tactical decisions. They suggest that civilian religious authorities should defer to military professionals on operational matters, particularly when soldiers’ lives hang in the balance.
The Broader Context
This rabbinic criticism occurs against the backdrop of unprecedented challenges. Israel faces a multi-front war while international pressure mounts and antisemitism surges globally. The stakes could hardly be higher.
Yet the phenomenon also reflects deeper questions about Jewish identity and values in the modern era. How should a Jewish state balance religious principles with military necessity? What obligations do Jewish leaders have during times of crisis?
What’s Next?
Rather than viewing this religious dissent as necessarily harmful, we might understand it as reflecting the complexity of Jewish thought itself. Judaism has always encompassed multiple voices and perspectives, even during times of crisis.
The challenge lies in ensuring that such discussions strengthen rather than weaken Israel’s position. This requires religious leaders to consider the consequences of public criticism during wartime, while political and military officials must remain open to legitimate ethical concerns.
Israel’s survival depends on military strength, international support, and moral clarity. The ongoing debate among rabbis reflects the difficulty of balancing these imperatives under extraordinary pressure. Whether this religious criticism ultimately helps or hinders Israel may depend less on the criticism itself than on how Israeli society responds to it.
The conversation between Jewish values and Israeli policy will continue long after the current conflict ends. How that dialogue unfolds may determine not only Israel’s military success, but its character as a Jewish state.
It is an undeniable fact that, Rabbis are amongst the strongest leaders of the Jewish community. With very few exceptions, Orthodox Rabbis count be counted upon to support Israel in its travails against its enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and Iran This was not always the case. Many bitterly opposed the creation of the Jewish State at its inception in 1948, on the ground that this would only be justified upon the appearance of the Messiah. At that time, Reform Rabbis were warm supporters of Eretz Yisroal. Nowadays, it sometimes almost seems as if the two have reversed their positions, vis a vis Israel. It is our fond hope that the present views of former will sway those of the latter.
Sources:
Dias, Elizabeth and Lisa Lerer. 2024. “Rabbis Emerge as Growing Voice of Criticism of Israel’s Tactics in Gaza.” New York Times, August 26. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/us/rabbis-gaza.html
Hamas Covenant 1988. “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Yale Law School Avalon Project. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
These”agents” in charge of security should not only be “let go” but charged with the highest crimes of treason and wilful negligence and punished accordingly!
My comment: I recall arguing with some Jewish progressives who argued during the 2nd Intifada that it was caused by Sharon visiting the Temple Mount with an armed detail. They didn’t believe the facts that this was pre-planned because they considered anything that came from right wing sources like Arutz Sheva to be lies. In fact, anything that contradicted their narrative was right wing to them. I just had to get this particularly argumentative person – the wife of a Jewish Columbia professor also sitting there who agreed with her – to calm down by saying diplomatically that we believe different sources (I couldn’t just leave as they were friends of my mother who I was accompanying.)
Years later, I was invited to a first night seder at some very maybe ultra orthodox Jews who were friends of my Jubu mother – he was an artist – in Washington Heights and when I quipped that there were two kinds of antisemites, the good ones and the ones who were still breathing, which had only gotten a chuckle from liberal friends before that, prompted rage from this particularly ultra-Orthodox seeming guest who said, “Jews don’t kill.” I shot back, “Tell it to the Maccabees.” He glowered in silence. Then I began referring to passages like Deuteronomy 20, others from Deuteronomy, Numbers, Genesis, Exodus, Rambam who said, “kindness to the cruel leads to cruelry to the kind,” The Babylinian Talmud: “If somebody is coming to kill you, get up early in the morning and kill him first.” He
replied, “That’s impractical.” 😀 Wait don’t Orthodox Jews believe that the Torah didn’t evolve but is the unalloyed instruction from Hashem?
He wound up saying why don’t I join the army and challenging me to a fist fight outside, which I declined saying, “you will fight your fellow Jews before you will fight our enemies?” and said that was “baseless hatred.”
Another time, I recall arguing with a non-Jewish bartender who quoted the deranged son of a former Israeli general neither of whom I had heard
if who was promoting the genocide blood libel long before this. He refused to believe in the existence of pay for slay or the Taylor Force Act! This was during Trump’s first term.
These people are attached to their bogus facts, sources, and values, especially pernicious when they stack the deck with supposed academic or religious authority and nothing will wake any of them up short of an earthquake. Most Americans were isolationist before Pearl Harbor and war hawks right after. Same went for 9/11. And most Israeli or even American Jews now don’t buy this lying Axis Salley/Tokyo Rose propaganda from these so called “rabbis” I think.
Sebastian, I guess we share common views on lots of these subjects! Thank goodness there are people on board that can think a little for themselves.
Avi Abelow on FB
“IT’S WAKE UP TIME…”
“A few weeks ago, Channel 12 journalist Nir Drori released a new Hebrew book titled ‘War Report’. It’s already making waves across Israel because of one quote from Ronen Bar, the disgraced former head of Israel’s Shin Bet (Shabak), the internal intelligence agency responsible for protecting Israeli citizens, who was in charge of Gaza security on October 7th, the darkest day in Israel’s modern history.
Bar, the man who ignored months of warnings about Hamas’s plans to invade Israel and massacre civilians, even the night before the attack, never resigned until forced out because of Netanyahu’s determination to replace him.
Instead, Bar granted an interview to Drori for his book in which he made one of the most shocking statements ever heard from a senior Israeli security official.
According to Drori’s book, Ronen Bar said:
“The activities of Minister Ben-Gvir and the Jews praying on the Temple Mount created tension that Hamas decided to take advantage of, based on their belief that they are the protectors of the Muslim holy places. Ben-Gvir’s responsibility for the outbreak of October 7th is much greater than all the army failures on that day.”
Let that sink in. The man tasked with protecting Israelis, the man who ignored direct warnings about an impending Hamas invasion, is blaming Jews praying on the Temple Mount for the atrocities of October 7th.
To grasp how absurd and dangerous this is, we need to remember what serious analysts had been warning for years.
Months before October 7th, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, one of Israel’s leading experts on Islam and the Middle East, warned in multiple interviews and articles that Iran had been building a coordinated multi-front plan on Israel for decades. The goal: to surround Israel with armed proxies, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Judea and Samaria, Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, all together with missile strike attacks from Iran, to one day strike simultaneously and overwhelm Israel’s defenses to destroy Israel in a surprise attack.
Dr. Kedar explained in detail how Tehran was uniting these fronts politically, financially, and militarily, under one command strategy, in preparation for the next great war against Israel.
He was not the only one warning. There were countless intelligence briefings, security analysts, and even local IDF spotters in southern Israel who were all sounding the alarm about a Hamas attack from Gaza. Hamas was training openly on the Gaza fennce, and practicing large-scale attacks. The Shin Bet, Military Intelligence Directorate, and Southern Command all had the information.
But the security and intelligence leadership, including Ronen Bar, ignored it.
Instead of preparing for the Iranian-led regional assault, Bar and others were fixated on internal politics, on Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and on Jews who wanted the basic religious right to pray freely on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
This is not merely incompetence. It is ideological blindness. It’s a mindset that sees proud Jews, Jews who stand for faith, sovereignty, and identity, as a bigger threat than the jihadi Muslim enemies around us, sworn to destroy us.
So while Iran was coordinating a multi-front assault, while Hamas was training openly along the Gaza border, Ronen Bar was advising the government that Hamas only wanted to improve the economic situation in Gaza.
Yes, you read that correctly. Days before October 7th, Israel’s top intelligence chief was urging the government to grant more work permits to Gazans so they could enter Israel for employment, arguing that Hamas is only interested in economic stability for Gazans.
That thinking is what directly enabled Hamas operatives to infiltrate Israel under the cover of “civilian laborers,” gather intelligence in Jewish communities on the Gaza border, and map out targets for the Oct. 7th massacre. Hamas terrorists knew who lived in which house, how many children, who had dogs, who were the heads of security, where the guns were stored etc. They knew everything, thanks to Gaza civilians who worked in the Jewish communities and acted like spies over months, or even years. (Food for thought, for all those who support continuing to employ Arab Muslim workers in Jewish communities anywhere in Israel)
How can anyone in Bar’s position make such catastrophic miscalculations and not resign immediately after the Oct. 7th failure?
How can the man who failed to defend his own people then turn around and blame fellow Jews, the very citizens he failed to protect — for the attack?
It’s because parts of Israel’s entrenched senior security establishment lost sight of the true enemy. They were, and some still are, trapped in a decades-old ideology, one that prioritizes appeasing a jihadi muslim enemy over Jewish strength and sovereignty. They have more contempt for a Jew praying on the Temple Mount than for a Hamas terrorist waving an RPG in Rafah.
That’s not strategy. That’s moral insanity.
This pattern isn’t new. It’s the same self-destructive thinking that led to the Oslo Accords, the withdrawal from Lebanon, and the 2005 Gaza Disengagement/Expulsion, when the same security “experts” promised that giving land to terrorists would bring peace. Instead, it brought rockets, tunnels, and now, the Oct. 7th slaughter.
And yet even after the bloodbath of October 7th, the same mindset persists. Many of the same unelected bureaucrats, prosecutors, and intelligence chiefs still dominate Israel’s most powerful institutions. They continue to undermine elected leaders, delegitimize religious Jews, and whitewash the enemy’s intentions, all while refusing to accept responsibility for their failures.
For those trying to make sense of this, especially friends of Israel abroad, this isn’t about politics. It’s about worldview.
One worldview says that peace comes from Jewish restraint, self-blame, and endless concessions to our enemies, and hiding our true identity as Jews in our ancestral homeland. The other, the worldview of Zionism, faith, and reality, says peace comes from Jewish strength, pride, and absolute sovereignty over our land.
October 7th proved, once and for all, which worldview is correct.
Our intelligence and defense establishment must undergo a total moral and structural reckoning.
We need a new generation of IDF and intelligence leaders, the fighters forged in this war, to rise and take command as soon as possible. Leaders untainted by the failed Oslo-era illusions or the progressive Harvard trained doctrine of “managing the conflict.”
These new commanders understand what the old guard refused to see: Iran’s grand plan, executed through Hamas, Hezbollah, and their proxies, is not new, not spontaneous, and certainly not a reaction to Jews praying on the Temple Mount. It is the culmination of decades of strategic, genocidal intent to destroy Israel and erase the Jewish people from our land, based on a 1,400 year jihadi Muslim ideology.
We must reject this culture of denial and deflection, and restore a leadership rooted in faith, truth, and courage.
Jews praying on the Temple Mount are not the cause of war. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and the ideology of jihad are.
And any Israeli leader, political, security or intelligence, who cannot tell the difference does not belong in the position of protecting our people.
Israel’s strength will not come from apologizing to the world or silencing our faith. It will come from standing firm, morally, spiritually, and militarily, against the evil that seeks our destruction.
Jews acting as the true sovereign on the Temple Mount, with genuine freedom of prayer for all and the ultimate goal of rebuilding our Third Temple, is not what brings war, it’s what brings peace.
That is the message of strength the jihadi Muslim world understands: that the Jewish people are back in their homeland, that we take our covenant and sovereignty seriously, and that we will never again appease Islamic terror. Appeasement invites bloodshed; strength commands respect.
The path to peace in the Middle East will never come from more concessions, more “temporary ceasefires,” or more illusions of coexistence with those who only use them to regroup, rearm, and strike again.
True peace will come only when Israel stands firm as the sovereign nation it was meant to be, unafraid to assert our rights on our holiest site, to defend 10 million Israeli citizens, and to protect every minority under our care from the same jihadi forces that have persecuted them for generations.
We must once again embrace the spirit that built this nation: courage without compromise, truth without fear, belief in God, and the conviction that this land, every inch of it, is ours to defend and sanctify.
October 7th was the price of ignoring those truths.
Our survival depends on never ignoring them again.
These are the truths we work every day to illuminate through our work at the Pulse of Israel.
Am Yisrael Chai.”
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AYqgCmcvo/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Sebastian, I don’t have enough thumbs to up your thumbs-up count. Your answer was excellent. Thank you!!
Can you respond about the Rabbis too?
Please excuse my French when I say that these Rabbis and religious leaders are full of sh*t.
There were several occasions in our bible where the Eternal commanded the Israelites not to leave anything alive after defeating the enemy. Check for yourself.
It seems that there are situations where this kind of approach is necessary. The Rabbis who have spent so much time studying Talmud to understand interpersonal behavior between themselves should go back and check what is required to be able to live in peace. Coming back to the bible, the consequences of not doing what was commanded were also described.
The idea of alienating potential allies is quite out of range. Whatever Israel does is used against it and those “friends” explain that killing a terrorist instead of incarcerating him for exchange in the next terror attack is beyond the pale.
The opposition to the rabbinic points of view are obvious. The public criticism during wartime is treasonous and helps the enemy while self-centered behavior (I want the body of my deceased relative back whatever it costs!!) should be highlighted by the same Rabbis along the lines of pikuach nefesh. It cannot be the correct approach to sacrifice (non-ultra-religious) young soldiers to bring back dead bodies, This can turn into a perpetuum-mobile.
With regard to the prophetic tradition, were those especially religious people not the same people who led the Israelites into battle back in biblical times? Maybe they have figured out an excuse not to participate.
The IDF has shown that those Yeshive Bucher (Those studying the religion a lot and analyzing Talmud) are quite capable of evaluating the issues in question if they would only a) take some training, b) apply them selves to the issue at hand, instead of figuring out more ways to avoid any kind of service.
The article concludes with the “undeniable fact that, Rabbis are amongst the strongest leaders of the Jewish community”. This was true for thousands of years and helped keep the Jewish religion alive during that time. However, the Rabbis must now adjust to these modern times when the Jewish people are regathering into the promised land and a State of Israel now exists. They have a duty to support the Jewish community and help it reach a better future for all of us.