How should the Jewish community respond to the chaos and brutality in Libya? On one hand, Gaddafi is murdering innocent people and we, of all people, should not be silent. On the other hand, many of those innocent people are from groups like Al Qaeda that actively seek to destroy Jews and Israel. Does our sense of human responsibility extend also to those who actively hate us?
How should the Jewish community respond to the chaos and brutality in Libya? On one hand, Gaddafi is murdering innocent people and we, of all people, should not be silent. On the other hand, many of those innocent people are from groups like Al Qaeda that actively seek to destroy Jews and Israel. Does our sense of human responsibility extend also to those who actively hate us?
The Torah tells us that we have an ethical responsibility to intervene if a person is in danger or being injured based upon the verse ‘do not stand by your brother’s blood.’ (Lev. 19:16) While this is speaking about the responsibility to defend another Jew, ethical behavior would enjoin us to help anyone who is in need based upon the teaching of ‘loving all created beings.’ (Ethics of the Fathers 1:12) We should note that this altruism is not obligated if you must endanger yourself to save the other person, in such a case it would be considered ‘midos chasidus’, saintly behavior to do so.
Our question is more complex when we consider whether we must defend those who actively hate us. If someone is out to kill you, the Talmud tells us that you should slay them first (Sanhedrin 72a). This is based on the Biblical sanction to kill an intruder who breaks into your house at night (Exodus 22:1). In the end of the Book of Esther, the Jews kill thousands of Persians who were out to kill them. (9:1-5) Thus one is morally sanctioned to kill terrorists in Gaza who are planning to launch an attack. So if one may kill someone who attacks you, one would then certainly not be obligated to defend them. So if Gaddafi is attacking Al Qaeda, whose mission is to destroy Israel and the West, one would certainly not stand up to defend them. We should note that even in this case, we are told that one should not rejoice over the downfall of one’s enemy (Proverbs 11:10). In a famous passage in the Talmud, we are told not to say Hallel, the prayers of praise on Passover because ‘the works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you (want to) sing praises.’ (Talmud Sanhedrin 39b). Why is this? Because there is a realization that even though they are my enemies, they are still human beings created in the image of G-d. It should be noted that after the fact, one can be happy that the persons who are out to hurt you are no longer around to perpetrate their evil.
Where this question becomes more complex is the makeup of the population in a country such as Libya. While such evaluations perhaps must ultimately be left up to the political scientists, the question is to what extent are these rebels people who are out to kill Jews and attack Israel, or are they people who express anti-semitism and hatred of Israel as seems to be the case. So the question becomes what if the person is not actually attacking you, but is verbally threatening you? Here we may distinguish between an enemy, someone who hates you, and a pursuer who is actively trying to hurt you. It is not clear from Torah sources whether you are allowed to pre-emptively attack someone who only verbally threatens you. However neither would one be obligated to defend someone who is your enemy. This what happened in the Sabra and Shatila camps in 1982 when the Israeli army allowed the Christian Phlangists to attack the PLO who themselves had been attacking Israel and running terrorist raids killing Israeli civilians. This situation and the situation in Libya are complicated by an additional factor. When these altercations occur, they do not just occur between warring factions, but invariably civilians are also the victims. Sometimes they are the victims as a result of collateral damage, sometimes as a result of direct attacks against civilians, as happened in Sabra and Shatila. The question of civilian victims is an extremely complicated one, and cannot be covered in this answer. We can conclude and state that generally one would not be obligated to defend one’s enemy who is out to kill you, and perhaps even one’s enemy who has verbally threatened you. The response to Ghaddfi’s attacks on the Libyan rebels would depend on the makeup of that group.
How should the Jewish community respond to the chaos and brutality in Libya? On one hand, Gaddafi is murdering innocent people and we, of all people, should not be silent. On the other hand, many of those innocent people are from groups like Al Qaeda that actively seek to destroy Jews and Israel. Does our sense of human responsibility extend also to those who actively hate us?
The murder of civilians protesting the Gaddafi dictatorship is an absolute evil, regardless of the political affiliation of those civilians. Even if the protesters—or some of them-- are themselves guilty of anti-semitism, Gaddafi’s actions are worthy of absolute condemnation.
In this respect, the situation in Libya is not analogous to the events that unfolded in Egypt last month. The Egyptian dictator had, despite his other flaws, maintained at least a “cold peace” with Israel, and some, although not all, of the protesters against his rule were avowed Islamists, seeking to re-ignite the active jihad against the Jewish State. But in Libya, the dictator does not have even partially redeeming policies. He actively fomented and supported anti-Israel and anti-Western terror, on many fronts, for decades. American reprisals forced him to renounce (at least openly) his nuclear ambitions, but he has no serious claim to being a stabilizing force in that troubled region.
As of today (March 2, 2011) the future of the Libyan revolution is in question, with Gaddafi fighting back and murdering his own people. Without holding unrealistic, fond hopes regarding the posture of a possible post-Gaddafi Libya, one may echo the prophet Isaiah in condemning the monumental evil of Gaddafi:
In the story of the Exodus, the Israelites flee from Egypt and are chased by Pharaoh and his army. We learn in that story, and it is repeated in the Haggadah, that God causes the Sea of Reeds to crash in on the pursuing Egyptians and they drown. (Exodus 14:26-29) The story continues in the Passover Haggadah that the angels begin to rejoice and God admonishes the angels saying, “You rejoice while my children are drowning?”
We get no pleasure from the death of any human beings . When we allow the deaths of human beings we lose our humanity.
Rabbi Immanuel Jacobovitz writes in “The Morality of Warfare”, a medieval Jewish source movingly tells us that one hundred Shofar sounds at our New Year services correspond to the one hundred groans by the mother of Sisera (Judges 5:28) when she saw her son killed in his battle against the Israelites. He was a brutal tyrant, wreaking terror on our people. His death was our salvation. Yet, he had a mother and to this day we hear her cries and recall her grief over the death of her child.
We are people who should be repulsed by violence and brutality. We ourselves have been murdered innocents. Who, if not us, should stand up and shout to the world, “enough, stop!”
Yes, as Jews our responsibility to save all humans from violence extends to those who actively hate us.
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