T. Belman. I made the same point in In war, what purpose does morality serve?:
‘There is no absolute morality. Morality is a luxury that can get you killed. Morality is a good thing in a civilized world but not in the jungle. In the jungle, its kill or be killed. The higher the moral plain you function on the more casualties you will suffer and the more impossible victory becomes. When our leadership call for morality they are saying we don’t want to win. Or they are saying winning is impossible. Maintaining the status quo is the only option.”
I have been there, to that area of Hevron, and no one who loves the Land of Israel could call to prosecute the soldier who shot a terrorist there.
“Has Israel’s “purity of arms” become a joke of political correctness for a kind of self-righteous defeatism?”
In 2013 it was Lt. Colonel Shalom Eisner, who was suspended from duty after striking a Danish anarchist holding a knife and blocking a highway near Jericho, as if the IDF was expecting its soldiers to submit to being beaten by “pacifists” who hinder the army’s activities and facilitate terrorism. Eisner was left on his own.
In 2015, it was Col. Israel Shomer, the commander of the Judea and Samaria Division’s Binyamin Brigade who shot and killed a Palestinian terrorist after his vehicle was ambushed.
In 2016, it is the soldier who shot a Palestinian terrorist in Hevron. The soldier was arrested and the whole world, supported by Israeli media and political-military echelon, called it a “summary execution”, despite the fact that the soldier feared the terrorist was ready to detonate himself. Again, a proud Israeli soldier was left on his own.
I have been in Tel Rumeida, the tiny enclave where the attack took place, and only those who want deport its brave Israelis and surrender the Jewish Hevron can call for prosecuting this soldier.
Israel’s morality cannot become the immorality of prolonging conflicts endlessly by preventing victory. But this is what Israel sometimes does.
The Jewish State is waging a just war against terrorism by fair means, proportionately, even too carefully, compared with global law enshrining the right to self-defense.
In Gaza, for example, the Israeli government never seeks victory, but yet another “ceasefire”. And in Judea and Samaria, IDF soldiers often answer with delay and weakness to terror threats against Israeli civilians, escaping from Palestinian Arab villagers, all this under surreal “rules of engagement”.
It is a kind of melancholic spiral epitomized by Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea’s column: “Come home”.
Has Israel’s “purity of arms” become a joke of political correctness for a kind of self-righteous defeatism? This military parody also doesn’t advance Israel’s cause in the international public arena: Israeli soldiers are already vilified as “child killers” and Muslim terrorists are justified as “resistors”.
The Israeli soldiers shouldn’t be “merciful” or busy showing “restraint”, but should destroy the enemies who come to kill Jews.
In the ghettos during the Holocaust, Jews discussed the morality of using weapons against the Nazi Germans. And it didn’t end well.
@ Ted Belman:
Whom else but G-d can tell us what is absolutely right and wrong? Otherwise you end up with a terrorist being a freedom fighter as the morally relativist world we live in breeds only confusion and dismay.
@ Ted Belman:
Sorry Ted, I just assumed as I was at one of your appearances in Toronto and assumed by the kippot on your head. I guess then it was worn out of respect for the Shul your talk was given in.
But to the point, I think you mix up nuances and discrete situations with lack of precision in the Torah. Thou shall not Kill is to be understood in context of when you can and can’t kill and the Torah does in fact delineate all possible situations if you study it enough. It’s not for lack of an absolute in each and every case.
@ honeybee:
Resistance is futile!
:
Ted Belman Said:
Absolutely true
@ Yidvocate:
I was shomrai Shabbat at one time to accommodate my wife, but in my gut I was always secular.
But this is irrelevant.
“Thou shalt not kill.” The Torah goes on to identify all kinds of situations where you can kill. There is always situations that ameliorate the absolute.
Can you steal food if you are starving? And so on.
Nothing is as simple as an absolute. Life is more complicated than that.
I can’t quote you chapter and verse. But I just know that life is complicated and necessitates nuances.
@ Yidvocate:
Thank you
.Yidvocate Said:
Can I try?
@ honeybee:
To expound and reveal the truth of the Torah.
You can’t.
@ Yidvocate:
With all de respect if Torah is absolute, why was the Talmud and other commentaries written ? How can one argue or dispute the absolute ?
@ honeybee:
Torah.
Yidvocate Said:
What’s absolute?
Ted: I thought you were a Torah observant Jew? What do you mean “there is no absolute morality”?
@ keelie:
” If you going to war, go to war” Sung Tzu