Judaism and war

This article deals with the views of Judaism and warfare.

The love of peace and the pursuit of peace, as well as laws requiring the eradication of "evil" using violent means, co-exist within the Jewish tradition. Throughout history, Judaism's religious texts or precepts have been used to promote  as well as oppose violence.

Judaism and violence
Some scholars such as Deborah Weissman readily acknowledge that "normative Judaism is not pacifist" and that "violence is condoned in the service of self-defense."

Rejection of violence and pursuit of peace
According to Reuven Firestone, Judaism's religious texts overwhelmingly endorse compassion and peace, and the Hebrew Bible contains the well-known commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself". In fact, the love of peace and the pursuit of peace is one of the key principles in Jewish law. Jewish tradition permits waging war and killing in certain cases, however, the requirement is that one always seek a just peace before waging war.

According to the 1947 Columbus Platform of Reform Judaism, "Judaism, from the days of the prophets, has proclaimed to mankind the ideal of universal peace, striving for spiritual and physical disarmament of all nations. Judaism rejects violence and relies upon moral education, love and sympathy."

Judaism and religious Jews oppose violence
The philosophy of Nonviolence has roots in Judaism, going back to the Jerusalem Talmud of the middle third century. While absolute nonviolence is not a requirement of Judaism, the religion so sharply restricts the use of violence, that nonviolence often becomes the only way to fulfilling a life of truth, justice and peace, which Judaism considers to be the three tools for the preservation of the world.

Jewish law (past and present) does not permit any use of violence unless it is in self defense. Any person that even raises his hand in order to hit a nother person is called "evil.".

Guidelines from the Torah to the 'Jewish Way to Fight a War': When the time for war has arrived, Jewish soldiers are expected to abide by specific laws and values when fighting. Jewish war ethics attempts to balance the value of maintaining human life with the necessity of fighting a war. Judaism is somewhat unique in that it demands adherence to Jewish values even while fighting a war. The Torah provides the following rules for how to fight a war. Pursue Peace Before Waging War. Preserve the Ecological Needs of the Environment. Maintain Sensitivity to Human Life. The Goal is Peace

The ancient orders (like those) of wars for Israel to eradicate idol worshiping does not apply today. Jews are not taught to glorify violence. The rabbis of the Talmud saw war as an avoidable evil. They taught, 'Thew sword comes to the world because of delay of justice and through perversion of justice.'Jews have always hated war and Shalom expresses the hope for peace, in Judaism war is evil, but at times a necessary one, yet, Judaism teaches that one has to go to great length to avoid it.

Violent tactics forbidden by Halakhah
Jewish law prohibits the use of outright vandalism in warfare. It forbids destruction of fruit trees as a tactic of war. It is also forbidden to break vessels, tear clothing, wreck that which is built up, stop fountains, or waste food in a destructive manner. Killing an animal needlessly or offering poisoned water to livestock are also forbidden.

Those few cases in the Bible in which this norm was violated are special cases. One example was when King Hezekiah stopped all the fountains in Jerusalem in the war against Sennacherib, which Jewish scholars regards as a violation of the biblical commandment.

According to Maimonides', on besieging a city in order to seize it, it must not be surrounded on all four sides but only on three sides, thus leaving a path of escape for whomever wishes to flee to save his life. Nachmanides, writing a century later, strengthened the rule and added a reason: "We are to learn to deal kindly with our enemy."

Types of Wars
Regarding war, the commandment of Milkhemet Mitzvah (Hebrew: מלחמת מצווה, "War by commandment") refers to a war during the times of the Bible when a king would go to war in order to fulfill something based on, and required by, the Torah. What is a milchemet mitzvah? It is a war to assist Israel against an enemy that has attacked them. -Maimonedies, Laws of Kings 5:1

Wars of this type do not need the approval of the Sanhedrin.

This is in contrast to a Milkhemet Reshut (a discretionary war), which according to Jewish law require the permission of a Sanhedrin. These wars (discretionary wars) tend to be for economic reasons and had exemption clauses (Deuteronomy 20:5) while, milhemet mitzvah tended to be invoked in defensive wars, when vital interests were at risk and had no such exemption clauses.

The Talmud insists that before going to non-defensive war, the king would need to seek authorization from the Sanhedrin, as well as divine approval through the High Priest. As these institutions have not existed for 2,000 years, this virtually rules out the possibility of non-defensive war.

The permissibility of war is limited and the requirement is that one always seek a just peace before waging war. Modern Jewish scholars hold that the calls to war these texts provide no longer apply, and that Jewish theology instructs Jews to leave vengeance to God.

Wars of extermination in the Tanakh
The Tanakh (Jewish Bible) contains commandments that require the Israelites to exterminate seven Canaanite nations, and describes several wars of extermination that annihilated entire cities or groups of peoples.

Wars of extermination are referred to in several of Judaism's biblical commandments, known as the 613 Mitzvot:


 * Not to keep alive any individual of the seven Canaanite nations (Deut. 20:16)
 * To exterminate the seven Canaanite nations from the land of Israel (Deut. 20:17)
 * Always to remember what Amalek did (Deut. 25:17)
 * That the evil done to us by Amalek shall not be forgotten (Deut. 25:19)
 * To blot out the name (or memory) of Amalek (or, according to Maimonides: to destroy the seed of Amalek) (Deut. 25:19)

The extent of extermination is described in the commandment which orders the Israelites to "not leave alive anything that breathes… completely destroy them …". Several scholars have characterized the exterminations as genocide.

The targets of the "extermination commandments" were the seven Canaanite nations explicitly identified by God in and. These seven tribes are Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Most of these descended from the biblical figure Canaan, as described in. In addition, two others tribes were subject to wars of extermination: Amalekites  and Midianites. The extermination of the Canaanite nations is described primarily in the Book of Joshua (especially ) which includes the Battle of Jericho described in. The instruction God gives in is for Israelites to exterminate "everything that breaths", but the precise extent of the killing varied, as Van Wees notes. He goes on to say that "The genocidal campaigns claimed for the early Israelites, however, were largely fictional; the intrinsic improbability and internal inconsistencies of the account in Joshua and its incompatibility with the stories of Judges leave little doubt above this."
 * Amalekites -   -  Israelites killed all men, women, children, and livestock.


 * Canaanites - (Battle of Jericho) - Israelites killed all men, women, children and livestock.


 * Canaanite nations - - Israelites killed all men, women, and children, but not livestock.


 * Midianites -  - Israelites killed all men, adult women, and boys, but did not kill virgin women or livestock.

Most scholars conclude that the biblical accounts of extermination are exaggerated, fictional, or metaphorical. In the archaeological community, the Battle of Jericho is very thoroughly studied, and the consensus of modern scholars is that the story of battle and the associated extermination are a "pious fiction" and did not happen as described in the Book of Joshua. For example, the Book of Joshua describes the extermination of the Canaanite tribes, yet at a later time, suggests that the extermination was not complete. Likewise, it is not clear if the historical Amalekites were exterminated or not. 1 Samuel 15:7-8 implies ("He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.") that - after Agag was also killed - the Amalekites were extinct, but in a later story in the time of Hezekiah, the Simeonites annihilated some Amalekites on Mount Seir, and settled in their place:  "And five hundred of these Simeonites, led by Pelatiah, Neariah, Rephaiah and Uzziel, the sons of Ishi, invaded the hill country of Seir.  They killed the remaining Amalekites who had escaped, and they have lived there to this day." .

Ethical issues
Theologians and other scholars have commented on the apparent ethical and moral dilemmas posed by the wars of extermination, particularly the killing of women and children.

Maimonides applies the rules from Deuteronomy 20:10 (the rules governing discretionary wars) to the war on the Canaanite nation, and suggests that the commandment to exterminate the Canaanites was not absolute. He writes that Joshua gave the Canaanites three options: to flee, to remain and make peace with the Israelites, or to fight.

Rabbi Gunther Plaut asserted that the Torah, itself, never addresses the morality of the wars of extermination.

Biblical scholar Sidney Hoenig discussed the "brutality" in the book of Joshua, but concluded that the "battle is only in honor of God".

Scholars Ian Lustick and Leonard B. Glick quote Shlomo Aviner as saying "from the point of view of mankind's humanistic morality we were in the wrong in [taking the land] from the Canaanites. There is only one catch.  The command of God ordered us to be the people of the Land of Israel". Scholar Carl Ehrlich states that Jewish commentators have tended to be silent regarding the morality of the violence in the Book of Joshua. Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that the commandments to exterminate are immoral.

Scholars point out that collective punishment, particularly punishment of descendants for transgressions committed by ancestors, is common in the Jewish Bible.

As genocide
Several scholars and commentators have characterized the wars of extermination as genocide.

Scholar Hans Van Wees characterizes the wars of extermination as genocide. Scholar Pekka Pitkanen asserts that Deuteronomy involves "demonization of the opponent" which is typical of genocide, and he asserts that the genocide of the Canaanites was due to unique circumstances, and that "the biblical material should not be read as giving license for repeating it."

Scholar Philip Jenkins characterizes the warfare of the Bible as genocidal, and considers the laws of warfare in the Qu'ran to be more humane than the Biblical rules. Scholar Leonard Kravitz describes the commandment to exterminate the Midianites (in the Book of Numbers) as genocide. Scholar Shaul Magid characterizes the commandment to exterminate the Midianites as a "genocidal edict", and asserts that rabbinical tradition continues to defend the edict into the twentieth century. Scholar L. Daniel Hawk describes the extermination of Canaanites as "ethnic cleansing", but notes that the narrative includes contradictory indications that Canaanites were absorbed into Israeli society.

Scholar Robert L. Cohn characterizes the extermination of the Canaanite tribes as genocide. Scholar Ra'anan S. Boustan asserts that - in the modern era - the violence directed towards the Canaanites would be characterized as genocide. Scholar Carl Ehrlich characterizes the Battle of Jericho and the conquest of the Canaanite nations as genocide. Scholar Zev Garber characterizes the commandment to wage war on the Amalekites as genocide.

Justifications and rationalizations
Several justifications and explanations for the extreme violence associated with the wars of extermination have been offered, some found in the Jewish Bible, others provided by Rabbinic commentators, and others hypothesized by scholars.

In God tells the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanite nations, "otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the lord your God". Another reason, justifying the war against the Midianites, was revenge for Midian's role in Israel's apostate behavior during the Heresy of Peor.

Another justification is that the Canaanites were sinful, depraved people, and their deaths were punishments. Another justification for the exterminations is to make room for the returning Israelites, who are entitled to exclusive occupation of the land of Canaan: the Canaanite nations were living in the land of Israel, but when the Israelites returned, the Canaanites were expected to leave the land.

In Talmudic commentary, the Canaanite nations were given the opportunity to leave, and their refusal to leave "lay the onus of blame for the conquest and Joshua's extirpation of the Canaanites at the feet of the victims." Another explanation of the exterminations is that God gave the land to the Canaanites only temporarily, until the Israelites would arrive, and the Canaanites extermination was punishment for their refusal to obey God's desire that they leave. Another Talmudic explanation - for the wars in the Book of Joshua - was that God initiated the wars as a diversionary tactic so Israelites would not kill Joshua after discovering that Joshua had forgotten certain laws. Some scholars trace the extermination of the Midianites to revenge for the fact that Midianites were responsible for selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt.

Association with violent attitudes in the modern era
Some analysts have associated the biblical commandments of extermination with violent attitudes in modern era.

According to Ian Lustick, leaders of the Jewish fundamentalist movement Gush Emunim, such as Hanan Porat, consider the Palestinians to be like Canaanites or Amalekites, and suggest that infers a duty to make merciless war against Arabs who reject Jewish sovereignty. Lustick, Ian, For the land and the Lord: Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, Council on Foreign Relations, 1988.
 * Lustick, p 3: "The fear and uncertainty that this demographic shift [increasing Arab population within Israel] is generating within the Jewish population as a whole make more attractive fundamentalist appeals to use Joshua's destruction and subjugation of the Canaanites as a model for solving the contemporary 'Arab problem'…. "
 * Lustick: p 78:" The image of Palestinians as doomed and suicidal in their opposition to Jewish rule in the Land of Israel corresponds to a more fundamental categorization of them. Gush rabbis and ideologues regularly refer to the local Arabs as 'Canaanites' … Thus Rav Tzvi Yehuda cited Maimonides to the effect that Canaanites had three choices - to flee, to accept Jewish rule, or to fight.  These are the choices both [fundamentalists] suggest, that frame the appropriate attitude for Jews to take towards Palestinian Arabs.  Of course, the decision by most Canaanites to fight ensured their destruction.  The same fate awaits present-day non-Jewish inhabitants of the land who choose to resist the establishment of Jewish sovereignty over its entirety…. Humane treatment is appropriate, [Hanan] Porat emphasizes 'only for those Arabs ready to accept the sovereignty of the people  of Israel'.  From this general principle he infers a duty to make merciless war against Arabs in the Land of Israel who reject Jewish sovereignity and the specific requirement to deport the families of Arab juveniles who throw stones at the passing automobiles of Jewish settlers."
 * Lustick: p 131: "No evidence exists of concrete plans to carry out genocidal policies towards the 'Arabs of the Land of Israel'. Nevertheless, analysis of the range of disagreement within the Jewish fundamentalist movement over the Arab question must begin with the fact that a number of rabbis supportive of Gush Emunim have offered opinions that could provide the halachic basis for such policies.  The substance of these opinions pertains to the identification of the Palestinian Arabs, or Arabs in general, as Amalekites.  According to the biblical account, the Amalekites harassed the Israelites … As a consequence, God commanded the Jewish people not only to kill all Amalekites - men, women, and children - but to 'blot out the memory of Amalek' from the face of the earth.   Traditionally, great enemies of the Jews, such as Haman in ancient Persia … and Torquemada  during the Spanish Inquisition, have been identified as descendants of Amalek.  Accordingly, the most extreme views within Gush Emunim on the Arab question, views quoted extensively by Israeli critics of the movement, speak of Arabs as descendants of the Amalekites… A Gush veteran, Haim Tsuria, defended [violence towards Arabs]: 'In every generation there is an Amalek.  In our generation, our Amalek are the Arabs who oppose the renewal of our national existence in the land of our fathers."

Atheist commentator Christopher Hitchens discusses the association of the "obliterated" tribes with modern troubles in Palestine.

Biblical scholar Niels Peter Lemche asserts that European colonialism in the nineteenth century was ideologically based on the biblical narratives of conquest and extermination. He also states that European Jews who migrated to Palestine relied on the biblical ideology of conquest and extermination, and considered the Arabs to be Canaanites. Scholar Arthur Grenke claims that the view or war expressed in Deuteronomy contributed to the destruction of Native Americans and to the destruction of European Jewry.

Scholar Nur Masalha writes that the "genocide" of the extermination commandments has been "kept before subsequent generations" and served as inspirational examples of divine support for slaughtering enemies.
 * Masalha, Nur, The Bible and Zionism: invented traditions, archaeology and post-colonialism in Palestine-Israel, Volume 1, Zed Books, 2007, pp 273-276:
 * "Prior revisits the old ground [in his book The Bible and colonialism: a moral critique] … First, the biblical narrative, with its 'divine promise' was inherently linked with the mandate to ethnically cleanse or exterminate the indigenous people … third, in the narrative of the Book of Deuteronomy the divine command to commit 'genocide' is explicit. Fourth, genocide and mass slaughter follow in the Book of Joshua.  These highly dubious traditions of the Bible have been kept before subsequent generations of Jews and Christians in their prayers…. The historical evidence, however, strongly suggests that such genocidal massacres never actually took place, although these racist, xenophobic and militaristic narratives remained for later generations as powerful examples of divine aid in battle and of a divine command for widespread slaughter of an enemy…. [Professor Bernardo Gandulla, of the University of Buenos Aires], while sharing Prior's critique of the perverse use that Zionism and the State of Israel have made of  the Bible to support their 'ethnic cleansing' policies in Palestine, …  Prior … found incitement to war and violence in the very foundation documents of Judaism, Christianity and islam.  In the Hebrew Bible, for instance, there is a dominant strand that sees God as ethnocentric and militaristic.  Furthermore, in their conquest of Canaan, the Israelites are commanded by Yahweh to destroy the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.  Later in the days of the Israelite kingdoms, they are urged to show no pity, but to massacre their enemies…. Today, both Christian Zionists in the West and Israeli messianics continue to refer to the Hebrew Scriptures for archetypal conflicts, which guide their attitudes towards the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine: the Palestinian Muslims and Christians."

Scholar Ra'anan S. Boustan asserts that militant Zionists have identified modern Palestinians with Canaanites, and hence as targets of violence mandated in Deut 20:15-18. Scholar Leonard B. Glick states that Jewish fundamentalists in Israel, such as Shlomo Aviner, consider the Palestinians to be like biblical Canaanites, and that some fundamentalist leaders suggest that they "must be prepared to destroy" the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not leave the land. Scholar Keith Whitelam asserts that the Zionist movement has drawn inspiration from the biblical conquest tradition, and Whitelam draws parallels between the "genocidal Israelites" of Joshua and modern Zionists.
 * Masalha refers to: Prior, Michael P., The Bible and colonialism: a moral critique, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.

Other views
Wars of extermination are of historical interest only, and do not serve as a model within Judaism. A formal declaration that the “seven nations” are no longer identifiable was made by Joshua ben Hananiah, around the year 100 CE.

Scholar Moshe Greenberg asserts that the laws of extermination applied only to the extinct tribes, and only to their contemporary generations of Israelites. Scholar Carl Ehrlich states the biblical rules of extermination provide guidance to modern Israelis not for genocidal purposes, but rather simply as models for reclaiming the land of Israel.

Commandment to exterminate the Amalekites


The Jewish Bible contains a mitzvah (commandment) to exterminate the Amalekites, based on the verse 1 Samuel 15 "Now, go and crush Amalek; put him under the curse of destruction with all that he possesses. Do not spare him, but kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." Rabbinical commentator Rashi elaborates on the this commandment: "From man unto woman, from infant unto suckling, from ox unto sheep, so that the name of Amalek not be mentioned even with reference to an animal by [someone] saying: 'This animal belonged to the Amalekites'." This commandment is related to attacks by the Amalekites on the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt ( and ).

Some commentators, including Maimonides, have discussed the ethics of the commandment to exterminate all the Amalekites, including the command to kill all the women and children, and the notion of collective punishment. Maimonides explains that the commandment of killing out the nation of Amalek requires the Jewish people to peacefully request of them to accept upon themselves the Noachide laws, and pay a tax to the Jewish kingdom. Only if they refuse is the commandment applicable. Some commentators, such as Rabbi Hayim Palaggi (1788–1896) argued that Jews had lost the tradition of distinguishing Amalekites from other people, and therefore the commandment of killing them could not practically be applied. Rabbis nullified the Torah’s commands to kill idolatrous people, by ruling that the Canaanite peoples no longer existed, that the Assyrians, not Israelites, had wiped them out – and therefore the command was a dead letter.

In later Jewish tradition, the Amalekites came to represent the metaphorical enemy of the Jews. Nur Masalha, Elliot Horowitz and Josef Stern suggest that Amalekites have come to represent an "eternally irreconcilable enemy" that wants to murder Jews, and that Jews In post-biblical times sometimes associate contemporary enemies with Haman or Amalekites, and that some Jews believe that pre-emptive violence is acceptable against such enemies.
 * Masalha, Nur, Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: the politics of expansion, Pluto Press, 2000, pp 129-131.
 * Stern, Josef, "Maimonides on Amalek, Self-Corrective Mechanisms, and the War against Idolatry" in Judaism and modernity: the religious philosophy of David Hartman,	David Hartman, Jonathan W. Malino (Eds), Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004 page 360-362
 * "The example concerns the set of biblical commandments … centered on Amalek, the ancient nation that ambushed Israel during the Exodus from Egypt… What does it mean to 'blot out the name of Amalek'? We have evidence of what this meant for biblical Israel … where the commandment is taken literally to mean: destroy by actually killing every Amalekite, man, woman, and child…. Some rabbis allegorize Amalek, taking it as a eupemism for the evil inclination; others have it symbolize the enemies of Israel throughout history; yet others make it the personification of evil….  There are also more specific historital identifications of the people of Amalek.  It is well known that in medieval rabbinic literature Esau, and his land Edom, are typologically identified with Rome and, in turn, with Christianity.  It is less widely known that Amalek … also came to be conflated with his ancestor and identified with Rome and then Christianity.   By the early medieval period, the descendants of the ancient nation of Amalek were identified by some Jewish authors as the Armenians…. Jewish authors could put a biblical face on this overarching foe by identifying it with Amalek and find hope for ultimate victory in the biblical promise that 'God is at war with Amalek from generation to generation' (Ex. 17:16)."


 * Hunter, Alastair G. "Denominating Amalek: Racist stereotyping in the Bible and the Justification of Discrimination" in  Sanctified aggression: legacies of biblical and post biblical vocabularies,  Jonneke Bekkenkamp, Yvonne Sherwood (Eds), Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003, page 99-105.
 * "The Amalekites could well be regarded as the archetypal vicitims in the Pentateuch, in that divine instructions to dispose of this people are given on more than one occasion… They also symbolize a further classic device: the rhetorical move … of portraying the victim as agressor in order to justify his/her elimination…. For most Jews .. .the denunciation of Haman the enemy is part of the light-hearted celebration of a rather 'laid back' festival.  But there are more sinister implications which have in recent years emerged on the political scene ….   In the early 1900s Rabbi Hayim Soloveitchik of Brisk argued that … there was a possibility of contemporary war against Amalek … Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik used this position in the early 1940s to contend that the Allied war against Nazi Germany could be understood in Jewish law as a war against Amalek… [regarding the Sept 11 attacks] a couple of 'position pieces' draw disturbing parallels between the suicide plots and the enemy Amalek.   The first is .. written by Rabbi Ralph Tawil, in which the writer … comes perilously close to equating President George Bush's war against terrorism with Israel's command to eradicate their troublesome enemy."   Nur Masalha and other scholars describe several associations of modern Palestinians with Amalekites, including recommendations by rabbi Israel Hess to kill Palestinians, which are based on biblical verses such as 1 Samuel 15.


 * Masalha, Nur, Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: the politics of expansion, Pluto Press, 2000, pp 129-131.
 * "Frequently Jewish fundamentalists refer to the Palestinians as the 'Amalekites' … of today… According to the Old Testament, the Amalek … were regarded as the Israelites' inveterate foe, whose 'annihilation' became a sacred duty and against whom war should be waged until their 'memory be blotted out' forever (Ex 17:16; Deut 25:17-19)…. Some of the [modern] political messianics insist on giving the biblical commandment to 'blot out the memory of the Amalek' an actual contemporary relevance in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. In February 1980, Rabbi Israel Hess … published an article [titled] 'The Genocide Commandment in the Torah' … which ends with the following: 'The day is not far when we shall all be called to this holy war, this commandment of the annihilation of the Amalek'. Hess quotes the biblical commandment … 'Do not spare him, but kill man and woman, baby and suckling, ox and sheep, camel, and donkey'…. In his book On the Lord's Side Danny Ribinstein has shown that this notion permeates the Gush Emunim movement's bulletins [one of which] carried an article … which reads 'In every generation there is an Amalek.  The Amalekism of our generation finds expression in the deep Arab hatred towards our national revival …'…  Professor Uriel Tal … conducted his study in the early 1980s … and pointed out that the totalitarian political messianic stream refers to the Palestinian Arabs in three stages or degrees: …[stage] (3) the implementation of the commandment of Amalek, as expressed in Rabbi Hess's article 'The Commandment of Genocide in the Torah', in other words 'annihilating' the Palesinian Arabs'".

However, in reality according to Judaism's view - Talmud book, today, since Sancheriv mixed up the nations, there is no nation that is identified as Amalek
 * See also Hunter, p 103
 * Also describing Palestinians as targets of violence due to association with Amalek is: Geaves, Ron, Islam and the West post 9/11, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004, p 30

Modern warfare
Jewish tradition permits waging war and killing in certain cases. However, the permissibility to wage war is limited and the requirement is that one always seek a just peace before waging war.

While according to Rabbi Judah Loew (Maharal) of Prague, Jewish law forbids the killing of innocent people, even in the course of a legitimate military engagement, some commentators claim that religious leaders have interpreted Jewish religious laws to support killing of innocent civilians during wartime in some circumstances, such as in 1974 following the Yom Kippur war.

During the 2006 Lebanon War 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", 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.”

In another case, 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'...".
 * 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.


 * . 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.  The booklet was withdrawn by the military after criticism, but the military never repudiated the guidance.  However, major and mainstream 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.

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.'"