The Hebrews invented justice — and now we are reclaiming it.
“Jews having power may be one of the most just outcomes in our history.”
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In the 200,000 years of modern human history, the Hebrews stand out as the pioneers of a profound concept: jurisprudence.
From the Ten Commandments to the intricate laws of the Torah, the ancient Hebrews were not merely participants in the development of civilization; they were its architects in matters of justice.
The Hebrew prophets — such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos — were powerful voices for justice. They called out social inequities and moral failures, urging people and their leaders to adhere to God’s standards of equity and righteousness.
The Hebrew term for justice, tzedek, is deeply embedded in Jewish thought and practice. The Torah frequently emphasizes the importance of justice, and one of the most cited verses is from Deuteronomy 16:20: “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof” — “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” This repetition underscores the imperative of striving for justice.
The Torah and the Talmud provide extensive guidelines on how to administer justice fairly and compassionately. This includes laws about honesty in business, fair treatment of workers, protections for the poor and vulnerable, and impartiality in the legal system.
In the modern age, and with the recreation of Israel in 1948 as a nation-state, many of these principles became key tenets of the Jewish state, including in how it conducts various aspects of war.
The IDF, with an unwavering focus on ethics, is one of the world’s most humanitarian militaries — even when battling genocidal, cynical enemies. For example, during the first Israel-Lebanon War in 1982, the IDF strategically bombarded a besieged Beirut to uproot the Palestine Liberation Organization (the primary Palestinian faction back then), which was headquartered there and terrorized the Jewish state on its northern border for decades.
During the siege, Shlomo Goren, Israel’s chief rabbi at the time, made a significant ethical declaration: Jewish law, he stated, required Israel to allow both combatants and noncombatants to flee Beirut.
According to the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides, a Talmudic opinion held that the “fourth side” of a besieged city must remain open as an evacuation corridor. This, he argued, incentivizes combatants to flee rather than fight to the end, which would be costly for both sides. Additionally, showing mercy during war is crucial, even to the enemy, as all humans are created in the image of God.
Goren’s public ruling unsurprisingly sparked controversy in Israel. Why let genocidal, antisemitic terrorists escape from the clutches of a siege? However, the Israeli army agreed with Goren’s declaration and kept two major escape routes from Beirut open. Approximately 100,000 people fled the city.
Then, in December 2023, amidst the Israel-Hamas war, the Israeli War Cabinet came up with the idea of proposing to Hamas leadership to release hostages and go into exile from the Gaza Strip, similar to what happened in the Israel-Lebanon War in 1982 with Palestine Liberation Organization leadership, being exiled from Beirut to Tunisia.
But sources insisted time and again that Hamas’ leader in Gaza and October 7th mastermind, Yahya Sinwar, would never agree to such a proposal. As of Thursday evening Israel time, Sinwar is dead, killed in a firefight with IDF soldiers in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that connects the Strip with Egypt.
The location of Sinwar’s death is particularly noteworthy. You may recall back in April and May the immense international pressures against the IDF entering Rafah, one of Hamas’ fortified strongholds where Sinwar and many of the other murderers hid. There were also dozens of underground tunnels that connected Gaza and Egypt, resulting in a big smuggling business for both Egyptian and Gazan officials (you know, Hamas).
The U.S. and its allies, as well as the United Nations and various “humanitarian” organizations, had voiced strong aversion to Israel’s planned offensive in Rafah, fearing it would lead to massive civilian casualties — a concern that proved unfounded.
By entering Rafah, the IDF extinguished six Hamas battalions (or about 25 percent of the terror group’s militants), enabling Israel to control all of Gaza’s border crossings and leading to Hamas’ rightful demise. Indeed, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported at the beginning of this month that, according to the IDF, Hamas’ military wing has been defeated and the group is now merely functioning as a guerrilla organization.
As for Yahya Sinwar, he was a serial murderer at heart. He began his days killing fellow Palestinians in Gaza and ended his life trying to kill Israeli soldiers before they took him out (along with other terrorists at the scene). It is the fitting end for a man who reveled in pain, celebrated the murder of Israelis, saw himself as a modern Saladin (the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria), and behaved with complete indifference to the ceaseless suffering of his people. To add insult to injury, Sinwar sought and even managed to take advantage of the suffering he caused to continue murdering others.
His elimination is the predictable end of brutal fundamentalists indulging in the worst kinds of terrorism: They manage to manipulatively create a vortex of death and despair around them, until they finally die in it. But on the way there, to the inevitable collapse of their murderous ideological fantasies, the suffering for everyone around them and in their crooked path is endless. Jews have a traditional curse for such people. It is very short: Their names will be removed. That is the end of it.
No one should be surprised by Sinwar’s death, as well as by Israel’s assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July, Hamas chief of staff Mohammed Deif also in July, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in September, his chief of staff and top generals, and Nasrallah’s replacement and the replacement of his replacement.
Israel has a long-standing policy of pursuing justice against those who commit acts of terrorism and violence against Israelis and Jews. For instance: the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, a key architect of the Holocaust, who was abducted from Argentina by undercover Israeli agents and brought to Israel for trial. Another one of these countless examples is when, following the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian group Black September during the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel initiated “Operation Wrath of God” — in which they hunted down and eliminated every terrorist responsible for the attack.
Since World War Two, Israel has probably assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world. Executing these individuals identified as direct threats to Israel’s national security sends a clear message that, “if you are an enemy of Israel, we will find you.”1
Within Israel, these operations are subject to legal scrutiny, including oversight by the Israeli Supreme Court, which has at times set guidelines for their execution to ensure they adhere to principles of proportionality and necessity.
Many Jews in the Diaspora are uncomfortable with this side of Israel. For them, their Zionist identity is intertwined with values like human rights, morality, and the historical experience of persecution. The idea of the Jewish state engaging in extrajudicial killings — no less in foreign territories — seems to clash with these values and raises difficult ethical questions.
And yet, Israel has no choice. What many of these Jews do not understand is that this is very much a life and death proposition for Israel and Israelis (including non-Jewish Israelis). We can argue whether it was a good idea for the Jews to achieve statehood in our indigenous homeland — and, at the same time — within one of the most volatile, undemocratic, and illiberal regions of the world, but I and many other Israelis have no interest in time-machine hypotheticals.
The reality is what it is: Israel fortunately exists, it is justifiably powerful, and it has enemies who continue to unapologetically vow for the Jewish People’s complete destruction, including but not limited to our state. Diplomacy, peace and love, and Kumbaya are simply irrelevant here, regardless of how unfortunate it is to acknowledge this.
Dr. Tal Becker, who defended Israel against the absurd accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice in January, put it perfectly: “Jews having power may be one of the most just outcomes in our history.” And grounded as he is in his commitment to morality, Becker added that “power is not a vice.”2
Eylon Levy, host of the “Israel: State of a Nation” podcast, declared it more candidly:
“Imagine if we’d got Eichmann in 1940. That’s the difference between Jewish history and the Jewish present.”
The concept of “just war” is present in Jewish law, particularly in the Talmud. While not explicitly labeled as such, it revolves around a set of principles that govern when and how war should be conducted, all of which Israel has adhered to since Hamas sparked war one year ago. They include just cause, an open declaration of war, proportionality and necessity, distinction between combatants and noncombatants, mercy and humane treatment, and pursuit of peace.
Judaism also grapples with the tension between “killed or be killed.” More specifically, the phrase “rise and kill first” is derived from a Talmudic principle found in Sanhedrin 72a, which articulates the idea: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”
This concept is known as the law of rodef (Hebrew for “pursuer”) and it refers to a situation where someone is actively seeking to kill another person. According to Jewish law, if it is clear that a person’s life is in imminent danger from an attacker, it is both morally permissible and necessary to act in self-defense — even if that means preemptively killing the attacker to protect oneself or others.
The underlying principle of “rise and kill first” is rooted in the preservation of life, which is one of the highest values in Judaism. The Torah places great emphasis on pikuach nefesh (Hebrew for “the preservation of human life”) as overriding almost all other religious commandments. In this context, the Talmudic principle does not promote violence or aggression but underscores the right and responsibility to defend one’s life when faced with an immediate threat.
These ideals stand in direct contrast to the perverted Islam proliferated by Islamists who champion death of defenseless civilians as “martyrs.” Israel has shown great competence in pursuing these mass murderers; hence the fact that, during the last few months, the Israelis have eliminated more terrorists on the U.S. most-wanted lists than the U.S. has managed to neutralize in the last two decades.
Indisputably, such is the ultimate form of justice because it produces a double-positive: assassinated Islamists means there are less of them to oppress their own people and inflict terrorism on their self-declared enemies.
It also sends a clear message to all of these enemies: “The IDF will reach anyone who attempts to harm the citizens of Israel or our security forces, and we will bring you to justice,” as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it, following the announcement of Yahya Sinwar’s death.
In the wake of this news, Israel has said it will guarantee that those holding Israeli hostages would be given impunity if they lay down their weapons and release the abductees — an ode to Judaism’s emphasis on restorative justice, which focuses on repairing the harm caused by wrongdoing rather than merely punishing the offender. The concept of teshuva (repentance) is central, encouraging individuals to take responsibility for their actions, seek forgiveness, and make amends.
Bergman, Ronen. “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations.” Random House, 2018.
Rosenblatt, Gary. “‘Jews having power may be one of the most just outcomes in our history.’” Future of Jewish.
"No conditions except your immediate and unconditional surrender will be accepted." - U.S. Grant (1862). I am glad to see someone practice this philosophy again.
The history of Rabbi Goren’s life, juxtaposed with the one whose name is no more, is beautiful. Rabbi Goren was the one who blew the shofar at the wall in 1967 when Israel captured Jerusalem in defensive fighting…Shabbat Shalom.