Judaism and warfare
Judaism and violence have been associated when Judaism's religious texts or precepts have been used to motivate, glorify, endorse, or justify violence.[1][2][3]
Ancient violence
The Hebrew Bible contains several violent episodes that are related to religion,[4] such as the battle of Jericho (Joshua 6:1–27),[5] the story of Amalekites (1 Sam 15:1–6),[6] and the story of the Midianites (Numbers 31:1–18).[7] However, modern religious authorities repudiate the sort of warfare described in the Torah, or assert that the violent episodes were not historical events, or claim that the events were exaggerated or metaphorical.
Purim festival
The Purim festival has also been described as celebrating violence.[8]
Modern violence
Violence against Palestinians
Judaism's precepts justified and motivated many violent acts - including several alleged massacres such as the Deir Yassin massacre - during the 1948 war.[9] However, Judaism's religious texts overwhelmingly endorse compassion and peace, and the Hebew Bible contains the well-known commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself".[10]
Ovadia Yosef
A former Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (who was also the founder and leader of Israel’s third largest political party, Shas), called for “extermination of the Arabs,” saying “it is forbidden to be merciful to them”;[11] and that on another occasion he compared Arabs to snakes, who should all be annihilated.[12]
Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
Critics claim that extremists sometimes use Judaism's religious doctrines to justify violence, for example citing Baruch Goldstien, who relied on precepts from the Kach movement to perpetrate the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.[13] In addition, critics claim that Gush Emunim and followers of Rabbi Kook advocate violence based on Judaism's religious precepts.[14] However, the number of extremists that subscribe to these interpretations of Judaism is a miniscule proportion of the total Jewish population.
Yaakov Teitel
On 7 October 2009, Israeli Security Authorities, Shin Bet arrested Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rachel for suspected murder and a role in a string of murder plots, in which two Palestinians were killed and Israel Prize Laureate Prof. Zeev Sternhell was injured. He was apprehended in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof after posting signs around town praising the attack on the Tel Aviv gay center. On 1 November 2009 Israel authorities the police say Teitel has confessed to the acts. According to the Shin Bet, he also planted a bomb at the entrance to house of a messianic family in Ariel, seriously wounding their son, then-15-year-old Ami Ortiz.[15] [16]
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
Not all violence was directed at non-Jews - the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir was motivated by Judaism's religious doctrines of din mosser (the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to non-Jewish authorities) and din rodef (the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew).[17]
Military
Activist Noam Chomsky claims that leaders of Judaism in Israel play a role in sanctioning military operations: "[Israel's Supreme Rabbinical Council] gave their endorsement to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, declaring that it conformed to the Halachi (religious) law and that participation in the war 'in all its aspects' is a religious duty. The military Rabbinate meanwhile distributed a document to soldiers containing a map of Lebanon with the names of cities replaced by alleged Hebrew names taken from the Bible.... A military Rabbi in Lebanon explained the biblical sources that justify 'our being here and our opening the war; we do our Jewish religious duty by being here.'"[18]
Some critics claim that Judaism's religious leaders have interpreted religious laws to support killing of innocent civilians during wartime in some circumstances, and that this interpretation was asserted several times: in 1974 following the Yom Kippur war, [19] in 2004, during conflicts in West Bank and Gaza,[20] and in the 2006 Lebanon War.[21] Critics cite a booklet published by an IDF military chaplain which stated "... insofar as the killing of civilians is performed against the background of war, one should not, according to religious law, trust a Gentile 'The best of the Gentiles you should kill'...".[22] The booklet was withdrawn by the military after criticism, but the military never repudiated the guidance.[23] However, the other religious leaders have condemned this interpretation, and the Israeli military subscribes to the Purity of arms doctrine, which seeks to minimize injuries to non-combatants; furthermore, the advice was only applicable to combat operations in wartime.
Extremist organizations
Some organizations that endorse or advocate violence based on religious principles include:
- Kach and Kahane Chai [24][25][26]
- Gush Emunim Underground (defunct): formed by members of Gush Emunim.[27]
- Brit HaKanaim (defunct): an organisation operating in Israel from 1950 to 1953 with the objective of imposing Jewish religious law in the country and establishing a Halakhic state.
- The Jewish Defense League (JDL): founded in 1969 by Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City, with the declared purpose of protecting Jews from harassment and antisemitism.[28] FBI statistics show that, from 1980 to 1985, 15 terrorist attacks were attempted in the U.S. by members of the JDL.[29] The FBI’s Mary Doran described the JDL in 2004 Congressional testimony as "a proscribed terrorist group".[30] The National Consortium for the Study of Terror and Responses to Terrorism states that, during the JDL's first two decades of activity, it was an "active terrorist organization."[31][28]. Kahanist groups are banned in Israel.[32][33][34]
See Also
- Christianity and violence
- Religious fanaticism#Judaism
- Religious violence
- Jewish religious terrorism
- Zionist political violence
Footnotes
- ^ Carl. S. Ehrlich (1999) "Joshua, Judaism, and Genocide", in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Judit Targarona Borrás, Ángel Sáenz-Badillos (Eds). 1999, Brill.
- ^ Horowitz, Elliott S. (2006). Reckless rites: Purim and the legacy of Jewish violence. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691124914.
- ^ Stern, Jessica (2004). Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, Jessica Stern. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060505338.
- ^
- Salaita, Steven George (2006). The Holy Land in transit: colonialism and the quest for Canaan. Syracuse University Press. p. 54. ISBN 081563109X.
- Lustick, Ian (1988). For the land and the Lord: Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. Council on Foreign Relations. pp. 131–132. ISBN 0876090366.
- Armstrong, Karen (2007). The Bible: a biography. Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 211–216. ISBN 0871139693.
- ^ Carl. S. Ehrlich (1999) "Joshua, Judaism, and Genocide", in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Judit Targarona Borrás, Ángel Sáenz-Badillos (Eds). 1999, Brill. p 117-124.
- ^ A. G. Hunter "Denominating Amalek: Racist stereotyping in the Bible and the Justification of Discrimination", in Sanctified aggression: legacies of biblical and post biblical vocabularies of violence, Jonneke Bekkenkamp, Yvonne Sherwood (Eds.). 2003, Continuum Internatio Publishing Group, pp 92-108
- ^ Dawkins, Richard (2006). The God delusion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 245. ISBN 0618680004.
- ^ Horowitz, Elliott S. (2006). Reckless rites: Purim and the legacy of Jewish violence. Princeton University Press. pp. 2–3, 107–146, 187–212, 213–247. ISBN 0691124914.
- ^
- Saleh Abdel Jawad (2007) "Zionist Massacres: the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in the 1948 War" in Israel and the Palestinian refugees, Eyal Benvenistî, Chaim Gans, Sari Hanafi (Eds.), Springer, p. 78.
- Carl. S. Ehrlich (1999) "Joshua, Judaism, and Genocide", in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Judit Targarona Borrás, Ángel Sáenz-Badillos (Eds). 1999, Brill. p 117-124.
- ^
- Reuven Firestone (2004), "Judaism on Violence and Reconciliation: An examination of key sources" in Beyond violence: religious sources of social transformation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Fordham Univ Press, 2004, pp 77, 81.
- Goldsmith (Ed.), Emanuel S. (1991). Dynamic Judaism: the essential writings of Mordecai M. Kaplan. Fordham Univ Press. p. 181. ISBN 0823213102.
- Spero, Shubert (1983). Morality, halakha, and the Jewish tradition. KTAV Publishing House, Inc. p. 137-318. ISBN 0870687271.
- ^ BBC News "Rabbi denounced as'war criminal", April 11, 2001[1]
- ^ Yiftachel, Oren. Ethnocracy: land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. ISBN 081223927X.
{{cite book}}: Text "page 180" ignored (help) - ^
- Horowitz, Elliott S. (2006). Reckless rites: Purim and the legacy of Jewish violence. Princeton University Press. p. 6-11. ISBN 0691124914.
- ""The Making of a Murderous Fanatic", Time magazine, March 7, 1994".
- Rayner, John D. (1997). An understanding of Judaism. p. 57. ISBN 1571819711.
- ^
- Weisburd, David (1985). Jewish Settler Violence. Penn State Press. p. 65. ISBN 0271026731.
- Bruce, Steve (2008). Fundamentalism. Polity. p. 4. ISBN 0745640753.
- Ehud Sprinzak, "From Messianic Pioneering to Vigilante Terrorism: The Case of the Gush Emunim Underground", in Inside terrorist organizations David C. Rappoport (Ed.), Routledge, 2001. p. 194-214.
- ^ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1125254.html U.S.-born Jewish terrorist suspected of series of attacks over past 12 years. By Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson. Accessed: 3 November 2009.
- ^ http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799061280&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Jewish terrorist arrested for alleged series of hate crimes. By YAAKOV KATZ. Accessed: 3 November 2009.
- ^ Stern, Jessica (2004). Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, Jessica Stern. HarperCollins. p. 91. ISBN 0060505338,.
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: invalid character (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) - ^ Chomsky, Noam (1999). Fateful triangle: the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (2nd Ed, revised). South End Press. p. 153-154. ISBN 0896086011.
- ^
- Rabbi Shim'on Weiser, "Purity of weapons - an exchange of letters" in Niv" Hammidrashiyyah Yearbook of Midrashiyyat No'am, 1974, pp.29-31.
- ^ "ADL Strongly Condemns Declaration of Rabbis" - ADL press release, dated Sept 9, 2004; http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/4561_62.htm
- ^ Rebecca Spence " Rabbis: Israel Too Worried Over Civilian Deaths", in The Jewish Daily Forward, issue of August 25, 2006. http://www.forward.com/articles/1438/
- ^
- Abraham Avidan (Zamel), After the War: Chapters of Meditation, Rule, and Research, as quoted by Steven Schwarzschild, "The Question of Jewish Ethics Today" (Dec, 24, 1976) in journal Sh'ma (vol. 7, no. 124) - http://www.clal.org/e14.html. Schwarzschild article reprinted in The pursuit of the ideal: Jewish writings of Steven Schwarzschild, chapter 7, pp 117-136, SUNY Press, 1990 (ISBN 0791402193). Latter book quotes the booklet on page 125. Schwarzschild writes that Avidan was the "military rabbi" of the Central Command Headquarters.
- Schwarzschild article includes a bracketed comment as follows: "... insofar as the killing of civilians is performed against the background of war, one should not, according to religious law, trust a Gentile [and justifies this claim, citing the utterance from the Codes:] 'The best of the Gentiles you should kill"...'". Schwartzschild indicates that the phrase "[t]he best of the Gentiles you should kill" is from the Mekhilta 14:7 ("tov shebagoyim harog"), citing Nathan Suesskind, "Tov Sheba-Goyim" C.C.A.R. Journal, Spring 1976, pp. 28f. and n. 2.
- Schwarzschild article states that the booklet was discussed contemporaneously in the Mapam newspaper. Other sources cite contemporaneous discussions by Haolam Hazeh, 5 January 1974; by David Shaham, 'A chapter of meditation', Hotam, 28 March 1974; and by Amnon Rubinstein, 'Who falsifies the Halakhah?' Maariv, 13 October 1975.
- Masalha, Nur (2007). The Bible and Zionism: invented traditions, archaeology and post-colonialism in Palestine-Israel. Zed Books. p. 158. ISBN 1842777610.. This book also cites the chaplain's booklet.
- See also a discussion of "Religious Zionist military rabbinate" in George Wilkes (2003) "Judaism and Justice in War", in Just war in comparative perspective, Paul F. Robinson (Ed.), Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., p. 22.
- ^
- Schwarzschild, Stephen (1990). The pursuit of the ideal: Jewish writings of Steven Schwarzschild. SUNY Press. pp. 125–126. ISBN 0791402193.
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- Schwarzschild, Stephen (1990). The pursuit of the ideal: Jewish writings of Steven Schwarzschild. SUNY Press. pp. 125–126. ISBN 0791402193.
- ^ U.S. Dept. of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2004. April 2005
- ^ U.S. Appeals Court Affirms Designation of Kahane Chai, Kach as Terrorist Groups Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
- ^ Kach, Kahane Chai (Israel, extremists) Council for Foreign Relations, 20 March 2008
- ^ Lustick For The Land and The Lord: The Evolution of Gush Emunim, by Ian S. Lustick
- ^ a b Anti-Defamation League on JDL
- ^ Bohn, Michael K. (2004). The Achille Lauro Hijacking: Lessons in the Politics and Prejudice of Terrorism. Brassey's Inc. p. 67. ISBN 1574887793.
- ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation - Congressional Testimony
- ^ JDL group profile from National Consortium for the Study of Terror and Responses to Terrorism
- ^ Kahane Chai (KACH) Public Safety Canada
- ^ Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) U.S. Department of State, 11 October 2005
- ^ Council Decision of 21 December 2005 implementing Article 2(3) of Regulation (EC) No 2580/2001 on specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities with a view to combating terrorism and repealing Decision 2005/848/EC Official Journal of the European Union, 23 December 2005