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Parsha Shoftim
Rabbi Meir Kahane
When You Go To War, Go To War!
“When you go to war against your enemy….” (Deuteronomy 20”1). Why does the Torah say “against your enemy” when obviously one goes to war against an enemy and not a friend? The Midrash answers: “Said the Almighty, ‘Go against them as enemies! Just as they do not have mercy upon you, do not have mercy on them’ ” (Tanchuma, Shoftim 15).
That is Judaism. Do not be “better” than they, since in the end you will not be better but deader. And certainly do not be “better” than the Almighty who commanded you to be cruel and merciless against those who rise up against you and against G-d, “for whoever rises up against Israel is as one who rises up against the Holy One Blessed Be He” (Mechilta, Beshalach,, HaShira 6:1).
The Sifri (Shoftim 192) adds: “You are not going to war against your brothers – neither Yehuda against Shimon nor Shimon against Yehuda who, if you fell into their hands, would have mercy on you . . . –but against your enemies, who would not have mercy on you.”
And the Yalkut (Shoftim 20) says the following: “If you have mercy on them, they will go to war against you. It is similar to a shepherd who, while tending to his sheep in a forest, found a baby wolf. He had pity on it and nurtured it. His employer saw it and said, ‘Kill it; do not have pity on it lest it be a danger to the sheep.’ But he did not listen, and when the wolf grew, it would see a sheep and kill it and see a goat and eat it. Said the employer, ‘Did I not tell you not to have pity on it?’ So did Moses say: ‘But he did not listen, and when the wolf grew, it would see a sheep and kill it and see a goat and eat it. Said the employer, ‘Did I not tell you not to have pity on it?’ So did Moses say: ‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you allow to remain will be like thorns in your eyes…’ (Numbers 33:55).”
He Jewish Press, 1990
Complicit In Murder
When a Jew is found murdered and the shedder of blood is yet unknown, the Torah enjoins the elders of the Sanhedrin and the elders of the nearest town to come to a barren riverbed –symbolizing the barren, sterile state of the murdered Jew who will never again bring forth children into the world – and declare, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it” (Deuteronomy 21:7).
“Our hands have not shed this blood”! Is there, then, the slightest suspicion that the elders have shed blood? Of course not. Rather, what the elders mean by their statement is that they did everything possible to insure that the murdered Jew would be safe and not endangered (Sotah 38b).
Can the Israeli government make this declaration? Can it stand up before heaven and its own Jewish citizens and proclaim that it did everything possible to save Jewish lives?
In 1967, as the glory and sanctification of G-d’s Name swept through the liberated lands, the Ishmaelities quaked in fear. Today, they stone, stab, shout at, and bomb Jews. Who is to blame if not the government, along with all the timid, frightened, gentilized Hebrews, whose utter lack of belief and faith in the G-d of Israel led them to reject and bitterly condemn anything like the ideas I suggest?
The Jewish Press 1980
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