Rabbis: Israel too worried over civilian deaths

As international human rights organizations decry the high toll of civilian deaths suffered in the Lebanon war, America’s main organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis is calling on the Israeli military to be less concerned with avoiding civilian casualties on the opposing side when carrying out future operations.

Following a solidarity mission to Israel last week, leaders of the Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement prodding the Israeli military to review its policy of taking pains to spare the lives of innocent civilians, in light of Hezbollah’s tactic of hiding its fighters and weaponry among Lebanese civilians. Because Hezbollah “puts Israeli men and women at extraordinary risk of life and limb through unconscionably using their own civilians, hospitals, ambulances, mosques… as human shields, cannon fodder, and weapons of asymmetric warfare,” the rabbinical council said in a statement, “we believe that Judaism would neither require nor permit a Jewish soldier to sacrifice himself in order to save deliberately endangered enemy civilians.”

The directive from the Orthodox rabbi comes at a time when both Israel and Hezbollah have been subjected to intense scrutiny from the media and from international human rights organizations about the Lebanon war’s grueling impact on civilians. Israel has taken the brunt of the criticism, with the number of Lebanese civilians killed in the month-long conflict put at about 1,000.

Civilian deaths on the Israeli side, which totaled 43, were markedly lighter despite Hezbollah’s steady rain of rockets over heavily populated towns and cities in Israel’s northern region. Defenders of the Jewish state say that Israel has been unfairly blamed for Lebanese civilian deaths, which, they contend, are largely unavoidable given Hezbollah’s practice of hiding in innocent people’s homes.

Condemnation of Israel by international groups for inadvertently killing civilians when targeting terrorists “has happened in all of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, but this has brought it front and center in very clear ways that everybody now sees,” said Marc Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress.

Read the rest at Forward

Comments

[Shavez]

What kind of faith is this? Kill people to save people? Has a big whiff of Jewish lives are more important than any other lives to it.

It's come to something when the men of cloth are finding excuses for the military. After pumping this kind of hate and bile from the synagogues, they'll be surprised when some take it upon themselves to attack them.

[Yusuf Smi]

As-Salaamu 'alaikum,

A fairly typical example of Jews in the USA being more Zionist than the Israelis (as with the "masada2000" outfit), much as some of the most hardline of those with an anti-Israel stance are Muslims with no personal connection to the region at all.

By the way, have you been receiving unsolicited "Forward" emails as I have?

[Osama]

Sounds like that is a privilege reserved only for yourself!

I know what you're saying about diasporas being more fervent, but I'm pretty sure religious authorities in the region were saying the same thing a few weeks ago too.

[David Kavanagh]

Shavez, to quote part of your comment:

"After pumping this kind of hate and bile from the synagogues, they'll be surprised when some take it upon themselves to attack them"

You can replace 'synagogues' with 'mosques' and the sentence holds true. I appreciate that the views fo Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Mohammad aren't representative of the wider Muslim population, but 'hate and bile' accurately describes their teachings.

[Shavez]

Difference being that Abu Hamza was thrown out of the mosque he took over, and OBM didn't have one ever. They were not institutional figures like these rabbis.

The other difference is that the mosques the length and breadth of this country condemn terrorism. It's pretty clear that is not the case for synagogues when it comes to the terror of their flock. In fact they seem to be cheerleaders.

[thabet]

religious authorities in the region

I assume your referring to this?

wasalam

[Sohaib]

Can anyone comment on how authoritive the Yesha Rabbinical Council (from Thabet's link) and the RCA (Osama's post) are, respectively?

This statement is astonishing: "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.""

If that is the understanding of the Israelis, then a lot has been explained.