How is the individual who is committed to a personal code of morality expected to suspend all of those values in the context of war? When is the personal code, or one’s halakhic code in the Jewish situation, to be suspended and when is it not to be suspended? When does the obligation to kill, steal or destroy things as a part of warfare, override all of the everyday laws that absolutely prohibit these activities? When exactly is there a suspension of the numerous halakhic moral safeguards governing one’s internal life and external behavior that often prohibit even the hint of violence, such as talebearing or losing one’s temper?... Does one treat [individual members of groups that have expressed some hostility to Jews] as an enemy, as if war has been declared, or does one, on the contrary, owe him all of the moral obligations of the Jewish tradition: honoring him as a creature of God, or as an elder (if he is older), greeting him with peace, honoring his property, even loving him as a creature of God, as Hillel did to all gentiles , and so on?
[from Paper delivered at Princeton University, April 27, 2001.
Available at: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/crdc/docs/j_limitsofwar_and_cr.html#_ftn13]
Suggested Discussion Questions:
1. What does this text add to the larger debate of ethical war?
2. How do you respond to the notion of "suspension of halakhic moral safeguards" during times of war?
3. How does one reconcile "tzelem elohim" (the notion that all people are created in the image of God) and just treatment of enemies during war?
Time Period: Contemporary (The Yom Kippur War until the present-day)