Parsha Pearls: Parshas Shoftim

The Difference Between Achav and Herod

We Don’t Want an Announced Redemption

Honoring the Government

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The Mishnah in Sotah 44b says, “This is only true of a optional war. But in a mitzvah war, all must go, even a groom and bride.” The Gemara explains that a mitzvah war means the war of Yehoshua against the seven nations of Canaan, and an optional war means the war of King David to widen the borders of his land.

There is another difference between an optional war and a mitzvah war: the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 2a says that a Jewish king can compel his people to fight an optional war only with the permission of a Sanhedrin of 71 elders. This implies that a mitzvah war does not require the permission of Sanhedrin. The Rambam in Hilchos Melachim Chapter 5 brings this distinction and gives three examples of a mitzvah war: Yehoshua’s wars, the war against Amalek, and a war to defend the Jewish people from its enemies.

Many religious Zionists have used this Rambam to justify the existence of a Jewish state with its own army. The army was founded in 1948 to protect Jews from an invasion, they say, and to this day it protects the Jews of Eretz Yisroel. Even if we personally don’t serve in the army due to yeshiva studies, we must support it and praise the selfless sacrifice of its soldiers. The Zionists deliberately encouraged this view of their army by calling it the “Israel Defense Force”. Since this is a matter of great confusion today, let’s take the time to discuss it at length and debunk the myth that the war of 1948 was a defensive war.

First, historically it is clear that the attack of the Arab armies only came in reaction to the declaration of a Jewish state. It was not the result of anti-Semitism or anger at Jews living and owning land in Eretz Yisroel. Jews lived and owned land there for many years and there was no war. War came as a result of the declaration of a Jewish state in May 1948. That declaration was not inevitable; it was the decision of the Zionists.

Rabbi David Cohen put it well in a speech to the Torah Umesorah Convention in 1983, “As history shows, it was by a hair’s breadth that Ben-Gurion decided to proclaim a state. The members of the Jewish Agency had to come to a decision because five Arab armies were threatening them… it was a fifty-fifty vote… It was Maimon, I think, who broke the tie and they proclaimed the state… The decision to proclaim the medinah was a clear cut decision which brought about the avadon (loss) of ten thousand Jewish neshamos (lives). The great tragedies we know – that the Jews who were killed were both husbands, fathers, sons, and grandsons all wrapped up into one. What kind of a loss and tragedy this was! It is not up to us to measure. Even it if is one Jewish life, we do not measure lives. By gentiles, for nationalistic or chauvinistic reasons, for the muterland (sic), one does this. But in our value system, what is worth more? So this momentous decision to say that we are taking medinah over Jewish lives is to me a decision which is grounds for mourning rather than simcha. The Gemara says that when someone hears that his father died, he recites two blessings: one that G-d is the true judge and one for his inheritance. But what does he celebrate the next year? The yahrzeit or the fact that he got his inheritance? A year ago his father died so it is a yahrzeit. The fifth of Iyar is a yahrzeit. The medina is not more important than the loss of ten thousand Jews, who died as a result of this decision. That decision was a momentous error. It was an achzarius (extreme cruelty).” (The Jewish Guardian, Summer 1983)

Even the UN resolution for a Jewish state in November 1947 was not inevitable. It came only as a result of immense Zionist pressure. Previously plans to allow the Holocaust survivors into other countries or even into Palestine were rejected by them. The Anglo-American Committee on Palestine published its conclusions in April 1946, calling for 100,000 Jews to be admitted to Palestine, but recommending that Palestine become neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state. Rather, the Mandate was to continue until the United Nations would execute a trusteeship agreement with Britain as the trustee. Had this plan been accepted, a good part of the refugee problem could have been solved without a Jewish state.

But Zionism opposed the committee’s report and insisted on a Jewish state. The two Zionist terror organizations, Irgun and Stern Gang, turned on the British, while the mainstream Zionists intensified their illegal immigration, challenging the British to stop the ships and send their passengers back to war-torn Europe. Images of the Jews on those ships were featured prominently in the news and gave Zionism a propaganda victory.

As the UN prepared to vote on partition, it became clear that a two-thirds majority for partition could not be reached. Four nations opposed to partition, Greece, Haiti, Liberia and the Philippines, were subjected to a deluge of diplomatic pressures and menaces. Two justices of the US Supreme Court and 26 senators cabled Philippine President Carlos Rojas and urged him to change his nation’s vote. Harvey Firestone of the Firestone Rubber Company, threatened with a Jewish boycott of his firm’s products, intervened personally with the president of Liberia and said that if Liberia didn’t change her vote, the Firestone company, the largest employer in Liberia, would have to reconsider plans to expand its rubber acreage there. (O Jerusalem, p. 28)

The Zionists, of course, were planning to declare a state regardless of the UN’s decision. It would just make it easier for them to get the world’s sympathy. When Yitzchak Sadeh, head of the Palmach, was asked his opinion on the vote in progress, he said, “I do not care. If the vote is positive, the Arabs will make war on us. Their war will cost us five thousand lives. And if the vote is negative, then it is we who shall make war on the Arabs.” (O Jerusalem, p. 36)

When the Zionists accepted the partition resolution, the Arabs rejected it and violence immediately broke out through Palestine, the Zionists could have cancelled their plans for a state and instead opted for the trusteeship advocated by the United States when they saw that partition was leading to war. But instead, Ben-Gurion saw the Arabs’ rejection as an opportunity to gain even more land through the war (O Jerusalem, p. 81). And of course, fighting for extra land was not self-defense according to anybody.

The British abstained from the UN vote and adopted a policy of having nothing to do with partition in any way, shape or form (O Jerusalem, p. 84). The power that ruled Palestine left it ownerless on May 14, 1948, leaving the Zionists to conquer it themselves. This is the last and most important reason why the war of 1948 has nothing to do with self-defense. You can only call something self-defense if you are legitimately ruling over a piece of land and someone attacks you. But if I walk into an ownerless land and declare it mine, and, when the other inhabitants of the land resist me, I fight back, is that self-defense? Who is the aggressor? Declaring a piece of land yours is an act of aggression. Self-defense is not defined by who attacks physically first. The UN resolution didn’t make the Zionists into the defenders; the UN was only making a recommendation. It wasn’t their country, and the UN’s recommendations do not determine sovereign ownership.

Even when we do have a right to Eretz Yisroel, such as in the time of Yehoshua when Hashem Himself gave us this right, the war to conquer the land does not become a defensive war. If that were so, the Rambam would not have counted Yehoshua’s war as a separate example of a mitzvah war; it would have been included under the category of defense.

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