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Topics in this digest: Vaera 5765
by Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
And Moses and Aaron did so, as the Lord commanded; and he lifted up the
rod, and struck the waters that were in the river, in the sight of
Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in
the river were turned to blood. And the fish that were in the river died;
and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the
river; and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. …Exodus
7:20-21
The episode of the ten plagues is one of the most familiar stories in the
Torah. As we read in the Torah this week and next, Pharaoh was resolute
in not letting the Hebrew people leave Egypt. Not just Pharaoh, but all
of Egypt was struck with plague after plague: blood, frogs, lice, flies,
death of livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and last, but
certainly not least, the death of the first born.
There is something that seems patently unfair about the plagues. Whenever
I discuss this parsha with a bar or bat mitzvah student, they are usually
are struck by how unfair it seems that everyone is getting punished. When
earlier disasters befell the world, they generally punished the wicked and
spared the righteous. When God decided that the world had become corrupt,
he saved the lives of those who were worthy: Noah and his family. When
Sodom and Gomorrah became amini-generation of the flood, God spared the
righteous people: Lot and his family. In fact Abraham argued with God, would
you destroy the city if
there are 50 righteous people there? 45? 20? 10? God relents and says he
would not destroy the wicked corrupt city if he could find ten righteous
people. The only righteous people there were Lot and his family—less than
ten. But God saved them.
But the plagues in this week’s parsha make no distinction between the
righteous people who may have been living in Egypt and the wicked people.
Surely not all the Egyptians were slave drivers. Many undoubtedly had no
contact with the Hebrew slaves at all. Yet when the water turned to blood
and the Nile stank, no one had water to drink: not Pharaoh, and not the
little children of farmers living far away from Pharaoh. When the last
plague came, when God killed the first born in every family in Egypt, the
Torah tells us “And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord struck all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat
on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon; and
all the firstborn of cattle.” None were spared.
How could that be? God is just, isn’t She? Where’s the justice in
smiting all those innocent people along with all those wicked people? Why
couldn’t God just smite the ones who deserved smiting?
It might help if we view the story in this week’s Torah portion as a
metaphor for civil war. The Hebrew slaves, with God on their side, go to
war against their Egyptian oppressors. One of the messages we can take
from the plagues is that in any war, there is suffering of innocent
people. Non-combatants, children, even righteous people on the other
side, will find themselves afflicted: in the episode of the Exodus from
Egypt, the innocent people are afflicted with their water turning to
blood, with homes destroyed by hail, with loss of life of the first born.
In modern warfare, the non-combatants are afflicted with homes destroyed
by bombs, with people killed or injured by bombs and weapons fire, with
death from disease or starvation as the result of damage to the civilian
infrastructure.
What level of “collateral damage” is acceptable in a war? How many
civilian deaths are “reasonable?” What guidance can we find in the Jewish
tradition for how much collateral damage is OK?
The two conflicts most on our minds these days are the one in Iraq and the
one in Israel. It is instructive to take a look at some of the statistics.
The US forces stopped counting deaths of “insurgents” after major combat
stopped; so these figures do not include Iraqi terrorists killed since May
2003. For simplification purposes, I’m using “round numbers” derived from
trustworthy news sources.
Allied combat deaths are over 1,000 since the war began. Iraqi combat
deaths were 5,000, and estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths are all over the
map: from a low of 15,000 to a high of 100,000. Even with the lowest
figure of 15,000, there were three Iraqi civilian fatalities for every
combatant fatality.
The situation in Israel is very different. The Palestinians have had 985
non-combatants killed, vs 1,326 combatants. The ratio is less than one
civilian death from every combatant death. But the Palestinians have
killed 715 non-combatants vs. only 187 combatants: four innocent civilians
for every combatant. This is clearly because the Palestinians have decided
to target innocent civilians—something the US and Israel have not decided
to do.
Targeting civilians in warfare, sadly, is nothing new. When the United
States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 103,000
civilians were killed. A conscious decision was made to unleash this
horrible force on an urban area, not on a remote military installation.
The fire-bombing of Dresden, which included among the intentional targets
the civilian city center, resulted in an estimated 50,000 deaths.
Intentionally targeting civilians is absolutely abhorrent behavior. It is
forbidden by the Torah, it is immoral, and it is even forbidden by the
Koran.
At the very beginning of the Torah, we are told that people are created
b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God—not only Jews, but people of all
nations and races are descended from Adam and Eve. Scientists, by the
way, agree that we all have a common paternal ancestor and a common
maternal ancestor. Everyone on the planet is in a sense our “cousins,”
and we are all created in the Divine image. We are commanded to be
compassionate to other people, as it says in the Torah v’ahavta l’re’acha
k’mocha, love your neighbor as yourself.
Because of these fundamental principles in the Torah, Maimonides codified
as law in the Mishnah Torah (Hilchot Melachim) that civilians should not
be harmed, and they should in fact be given an opportunity to escape from
the fighting. We are also commanded to be careful about not wantonly
destroying property—a principle called bal taschit, which is derived from
a commandment in the Torah NOT destroy fruit-bearing trees to build siege
engines when you go to war—use non fruit-bearing trees instead.
Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi, head of the International Association of Muslim
Scholars issued a communiqué which reads:
It is forbidden to attack noncombatants, even if they belong to the
attacking countries. The soul of man is sacred and an attack on it is an
attack on all humanity. [This is because it says in Koran 5:32:] 'Whoever
slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land,
it is as though he slew all men.'
"The Prophet [Muhammad] forbade the killing of women and children, saying
'Do not kill a small child' and 'Do not kill descendants and simple
laborers,' [i.e.] anyone who hires him to carry out services that are not
connected to fighting. Similarly, Islam has forbidden the murder of
hostages and [priests] who dedicate themselves to God.
Unfortunately, the Sheikh uses a very broad definition of
non-combatant—engineers and truck drivers working for contractors in Iraq
he includes as “combatants” because they are supporting the military. But
at the very least, he would forbid some of the things that have happened
in
Iraq, like executing female aid workers.
If we look at the four parties involved in the two current conflicts we
are concerned with—the US, Israel, Iraqi insurgents, and Palestinians—we
can see that contrary to teachings of their own religion and a basic sense
of human decency, the Iraqis and Palestinians have been intentionally
targeting civilian non-combatants. The US is better—not intentionally
targeting civilians, but as the destruction of Falluja shows (death toll
600 civilians and one destroyed city), not being terribly concerned about
minimizing “collateral damage.”
The party that seems to be most vilified in world opinion—Israel—is the
only that is conducting the war in a truly moral fashion, risking loss of
life to its own troops to minimize damage and death to the other side.
The US drops bombs on Falluja to root out insurgents. If Israel did the
same thing in Jenin, they could have saved the lives of many Israeli
soldiers—at a cost of many more non-combatants. Of all four parties,
Israel is the only one that has killed less than one non-combatant for
every combatant.
As the plagues in this week’s Torah portion remind us, harm to innocent
people, including some loss of life, is unavoidable in a situation of war.
It’s what makes war so horrible. We can be proud that our Jewish brothers
in Israel conduct war as ethically as possible. In this matter Israel is
being a “light to the nations.” We should encourage the US government to
follow Israel’s example, and take more care to fight a moral
war—minimizing civilian casualties, and treating prisoners properly: in
accord with the Geneva Conventions.
Shabbat Shalom
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