10 Jewish Ethics That Guide Wartime Israel
These timeless Jewish values aren’t just ancient teachings; they shape how Israel defends itself, even in the most difficult moments of war.
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When the Jewish state goes to war, it doesn’t leave its values behind.
On the contrary, it brings them to the front lines.
Israel is often accused of being aggressive, militaristic, even heartless in its defense. But few stop to ask: What actually guides Israel in moments of war? What moral code shapes a nation constantly forced to defend itself in a world that rarely gives it the benefit of the doubt?
The answer is found not in think tanks or weapons systems, but in something much older: Jewish values. Rooted in Torah, refined through centuries of exile and persecution, and reborn in Jewish sovereignty, these principles form the spiritual architecture of Israel’s actions, even when those actions involve life-and-death decisions.
At a time when headlines flatten moral complexity, and Israel is judged by double standards, it’s worth stepping back and asking: What does it mean to fight like a Jew? What does it mean to wield power with a conscience?
Here are 10 Jewish values that don’t just explain how Israel fights, but why it must.
1) The Sanctity of Human Life
In Hebrew: Pikuach Nefesh (פיקוח נפש)
In Jewish law, pikuach nefesh — the obligation to save a life — overrides nearly every other commandment, including the observance of Shabbat and dietary laws. Life is not just valuable; it is sacred. Israel’s military doctrine is shaped by this principle.
The mission is not conquest, revenge, or regional dominance. It is about survival. When a regime declares, repeatedly and publicly, that it seeks your annihilation and then builds the weaponry to carry it out, every delay in response risks Jewish blood.
In a post-Holocaust world, in which Jewish helplessness led to the industrialized slaughter of six million, pikuach nefesh has become not just a theological principle, but also a national policy. Israel’s preemptive action is not warmongering; it is an ethical imperative rooted in a Jewish worldview where life is the highest good.
2) Don’t be a bystander when you can save a life.
In Hebrew: Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa. (.לא תעמד על דם רעך)
This commandment from Leviticus 19:16 doesn’t allow for moral neutrality in the face of danger; it demands moral action.
The Jewish People know what it means to be abandoned — to have our cries ignored, to see our blood spilled without global response. Iran’s open calls for Jewish genocide are not whispered in secret strategy rooms; they’re chanted in public squares, printed on missiles, and echoed in Friday sermons.
Israel, having learned history’s hardest lessons, refuses to be a bystander to its own threatened destruction. This value is the heartbeat of Jewish moral responsibility — not just to protect one’s own, but to act when action is required, especially when others are too cowardly, too cynical, or too slow to do so.
3) Remember.
In Hebrew: Zachor. (.זכור)
Zachor is one of the most repeated commands in the Torah. Remember Amalek. Remember the Exodus. Remember the Sabbath. Remember what was done to you when you were powerless.
Jewish memory is not nostalgia; it’s protection. The Jewish calendar is a timeline of trauma and triumph. Iran’s current threats echo ancient ones — from Haman in Persia, to Hitler in Europe. The Jewish psyche, sharpened by these cycles of near-destruction, does not take existential threats lightly.
Zachor means knowing history well enough to never repeat its worst chapters. Israel’s actions today are built on that memory, not out of paranoia, but out of awareness. We remember not just who we are, but what has been done to us.
4) The Law of the Pursuer
In Hebrew: din rodef (דין רודף)
The rodef is a person who is actively pursuing another to kill them. In Jewish law, the community has not just the right but the duty to stop the rodef, even lethally if necessary.
Iran, with its terror proxies and nuclear genocidal ambitions, is not a theoretical threat; it is an active rodef. Iranian leaders call for Israel’s elimination, while heavily funding and equipping terrorist organizations in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad), Yemen (Houthis), as well as militias in Syria, Iraq, and the West Bank.
This isn’t theory; it’s pursuit. Din rodef provides both legal and moral clarity. Preemptive self-defense is not an act of escalation; it is an act of rescue. And rescue, in Judaism, is sacred.
5) Unity of Israel
In Hebrew: achdut Yisrael (אחדות ישראל)
Arguing and debating are Israelis’ favorite pastime, but when existential danger looms, something miraculous happens: unity. Political divides shrink. Religious labels fade.
You see it across all of Israel: secular Jews lighting Shabbat candles, ultra-Orthodox volunteers delivering supplies to IDF soldiers, Left-wing kibbutzniks and Right-wing settlers praying for the same infantry units.
Achdut Yisrael is not about conformity; it’s about covenant, a shared story, a shared soul. Iran may not realize it, but their aggression toward Israel doesn’t fracture the Jewish People; it fuses us.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival,” wrote Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid earlier this week, “but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one. The whole country is united in this moment, when faced with an enemy sworn to our destruction, nothing will divide us.”1
6) Loving Peace and Pursuing Peace
In Hebrew: ohev shalom ve’rodef shalom (אוהב שלום ורודף שלום)
Judaism doesn’t just prize peace; it commands its pursuit. Aaron the High Priest, known in rabbinic tradition as a model of peace-making, is described as one who “loved peace and pursued peace” (ohev shalom ve-rodef shalom). The distinction is critical. It’s not enough to love peace in theory; you must actively chase it in the real world, even when it’s elusive, complicated, or dangerous.
Israel, contrary to what many critics allege, has consistently lived out this value, not only through rhetoric, but through real and painful concessions. It has returned land, evacuated settlements, unilaterally withdrawn from territories, and endured waves of terror after extending diplomatic hands.
And, crucially, Israel has made peace with every country that has sincerely sought it: Egypt in 1979, Jordan in 1994, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan through the Abraham Accords a few years ago. When peace has been offered in good faith, Israel has not hesitated to say yes, even when it required immense political risk and internal sacrifice.
But rodef shalom (pursuing peace) does not mean self-delusion. Judaism insists on peace that is just, secure, and sustainable — not appeasement masquerading as diplomacy. Peace is not possible with a regime that arms terrorists to the teeth, funds global jihad, and teaches martyrdom to children. To love peace in such a world is to prepare for war when necessary. Israel’s response to Iran is not a contradiction of peace; it’s the defense of it.
7) The Eternity of Israel
In Hebrew: netzach Yisrael (נצח ישראל)
The phrase netzach Yisrael lo yeshaker (“The Eternal One of Israel does not lie.”) was spoken by the prophet Samuel and has become a rallying cry for Jewish resilience. While empires rise and fall, the Jews remain.
Babylon. Persia. Rome. Spain. Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union. All tried to erase us. All failed.
Iran is just the latest in a long line of civilizations that mistake Jewish patience for Jewish weakness. But the Jewish story is not written by tyrants; it is written by persistence. Israel exists not despite history, but because of it. It is the proof of netzach, the eternity of a people who refuse to disappear.
8) Return and Moral Reckoning
In Hebrew: teshuvah (תשובה)
Teshuvah is usually translated as “repentance,” but it literally means “return.” Return to self. Return to purpose. Return to covenant. The modern State of Israel itself is an act of teshuvah, a return to Jewish sovereignty after 2,000 years of exile.
But teshuvah also includes reflection. Israel debates itself constantly — about war, peace, and whether it’s permissible to walk across the street on a red light even if no cars are in sight. We are a nation of conscience, often to a fault, where no action goes unquestioned and no decision is made without wrestling with its implications.
This capacity for self-scrutiny is not weakness; it’s a sign of a moral tradition that never stops asking: “Are we doing the right thing?” Even in war, even under threat, Israel holds itself accountable. That is teshuvah too, not just returning to the land, but returning to the ethical demands that make the Jewish People who we are.
9) Do not destroy needlessly.
In Hebrew: bal tashchit (בל תשחית)
The principle of bal tashchit, derived from Deuteronomy 20:19–20, commands that even in wartime, we must not destroy indiscriminately. Originally applied to fruit trees during a siege — “Do not cut them down, for the tree of the field is man’s life.” — this law evolved into a broader ethic of restraint, conservation, and moral responsibility. In Jewish tradition, even when fighting is necessary, destruction for its own sake is forbidden.
Israel has embedded this value into its military ethos. Unlike its enemies, who deliberately target civilians and thrive on maximum destruction, Israel takes extraordinary measures to avoid unnecessary harm. Its intelligence apparatus works tirelessly to ensure that strikes are surgical and focused on legitimate military targets. Real-time drone surveillance, human verification on the ground, and abort mechanisms are standard operational protocol.
The IDF also calls off airstrikes when civilians enter the area. It warns buildings in advance of destruction. It drops leaflets, sends text messages, makes phone calls to minimize loss of life, and even invented the war tactic of “roof-knocking” (the practice of dropping low-yield devices on the roofs of targeted infrastructure as a prior warning of imminent bombing attacks to give civilians time to flee the attack).
No modern army is perfect, but few go to such lengths to limit harm — not because it’s good PR, but because bal tashchit is built into the moral DNA of the Jewish People. Restraint is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of a civilization that believes in ethical warfare, even when surrounded by enemies who do not.
10) Mutual Responsibility
In Hebrew: areyvut (ערובות)
In the Talmud it says, “Kol Yisrael areyvim zeh bazeh.” (“All Jews are responsible for one another.”) This deceptively simple phrase contains within it an entire philosophy of Jewish peoplehood. It declares that the Jewish People are not merely a collection of individuals or communities, but a single, interconnected soul. One Jew’s pain is all Jews’ pain. One Jew’s safety, one Jew’s dignity, one Jew’s future — they are national and spiritual responsibilities.
In the context of Israel’s war with Iran, areyvut takes on living, breathing form. Israeli soldiers do not go into battle alone; they carry with them the hopes, prayers, and solidarity of Jews across the world. Diaspora Jews, often thousands of kilometers away, feel the tremors of every rocket strike and the heartbeat of every siren. They organize rallies. They raise money. They light Shabbat candles with extra intention. They speak up in hostile environments and defend Israel in echo chambers of silence and bias. Not because they were asked, but because areyvut is covenantal.
Inside Israel, areyvut becomes even more visceral. It’s the secular Tel Aviv bartender signing up for reserve duty. It’s the ultra-Orthodox medic stitching wounds in a trauma unit. It’s communities, some deeply opposed politically, coming together to cook meals for soldiers, to donate blood, to offer their homes to evacuees. In war, the fractures of Israeli society don’t disappear, but something more ancient overrides them: the memory that we are responsible for each other. Not metaphorically, but literally.
And that responsibility doesn’t end with Jews. The broader implication of areyvut, articulated by thinkers like Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, is that a people trained in mutual responsibility must eventually carry that ethic into the world. It’s why Israel sends aid teams to earthquake zones, builds field hospitals for refugees, and risks its soldiers to evacuate civilians, even from hostile territories.
In the Jewish worldview, areyvut is not a slogan or charity; it’s identity. We don’t survive alone. We don’t flourish alone. And when we’re facing an annihilationist regime, we stand — together.
“Yair Lapid: As Iran vows our destruction, Israel unites - opinion.” The Jerusalem Post.
If only every nation followed these same 10 ethical dictates!
While I’ve been aware of most of these tenets being incorporated into the actions of this war, seeing them altogether, presented with contextual references, makes me feel a renewed depth of pride in my Jewishness. Thank you! Kol hakavod!