Organization: Bar-Ilan University Computing Center, Israel
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 11:35:23 IST
From: Shaul Wallach <F66204@BARILVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: leibowitz
Distribution: talk

     While Wayne has not yet responded to the presentation
and discussion of complete quotes of Maimonides from his
Epistle to Yemen and elsewhere, there is another post of
his containing quotes of Maimonides by Harkabi that should
likewise not pass without comment.

In article <1993Jan15.1777.22692@channel1>, "wayne mcguire"
<wayne.mcguire@channel1.com> writes:

>  ...
>Here are a few clips from Harkabi's Israel's Fateful Hour
>(un-SGMLized) on Maimonides that are of interest:
>
>Harkabi, Yehoshafat. Israel's Fateful Hour. New York: Harper &
>Row, 1988. Page 150.
>
>     Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, in a collection of articles intended to
>     justify the religious terrorist Underground that emerged in
>     Israel in the mid-1980's, explained that the killing of a
>     non-Jew is not considered murder:
>
>        Anyone who looks through the code of Maimonides, which is
>        the pillar of _halakha_ in the Jewish world, and searches
>        for the concept "thou shalt not murder" or the concept
>        "holy blood" with regard to the killing of a non-Jew will
>        search in vain, because he will not find it.... It
>        follows from Maimonides' words that a Jew who killed a
>        non-Jew was exempt from human judgement, and has not
>        violated the prohibition on murder.  As Maimonides writes
>        in the Law of Murderers: "A Jew who killed a resident
>        alien is not sentenced to death by a court of law"
>        (_Zeffiyra_).

     While we don't have Harkabi's book, we do have the magazine
"Zefiyya" (as it should be read) and I have checked out the article
by Rabbi Ariel that Harkabi has quoted. It turns out that R. Ariel
admits at the beginning of his article that the Gush Emunim
movement, along with its rabbis, overwhelmingly condemned the
killings in Hebron by the Jewish Underground. These leaders of the
settlers themselves were the ones who called the killings "murder"
and applied the concept of "holy blood" to non-Jews. As Ehud
Sprinzak has explained in his book (cited by Wayne), R. Ariel
represents the most extreme element of the settlement movement
and is outside the mainstream of Gush Emunim.

     Moreover, a closer look at Maimonides does not support
R. Ariel's claim that killing a non-Jew is not murder. For in
the Laws of Murder (5:3) Maimonides rules that a Jew who
accidentally kills a non-Jew is sentenced to exile just as
a Jew who accidentally kills a Jew. The ruling cited by R. Ariel
pertains to intentional murder, for which the death sentence
applies to a Jew only when he murders a Jew, but not when he
murders a non-Jew. The fact that he is not sentenced to death
does not mean he has not committed murder. Indeed, the Rabbinic
source of Maimonides' ruling (the Mechilta) states that his
sentence is "handed over to Heaven". While the severity of
this sentence cannot be determined from the context, there
are other crimes (eg. profanation of the Sabbath) in which
Divine punishment is more severe (excision from the World to
Come) than that of a human court.

     In Jewish Law there are exigencies in which a human court
of law that cannot apply the Biblical death sentence may
nevertheless have the criminal killed or sentenced to life
imprisonment if the situation warrants it. My rabbi, an expert
on Maimonides who has a strong Zionist leaning, affirmed to me
that in a situation where a deterrent is needed to prevent Jews
from killing non-Jews and a general deterioration of relations,
Jewish Law would permit application of these extra-Biblical
measures.

    It is worth noting that discussions of this crime are
conspicuously absent from the Rabbinic Jewish responsa literature.
In a search of our database of responsa here at Bar-Ilan, I
found many discussions of cases where non-Jews had killed
Jews, in which cases evidence of death was needed in order
to permit the widows to remarry, but none of cases where
Jews had killed non-Jews. I do remember seeing a responsum
of R. Yoel Sirkis of 17th century Poland, who permitted the
handing over of a Jew wanted by the authorities for an alleged
crime, in the face of a threat to the entire community.

>Harkabi, Yehoshafat. Israel's Fateful Hour. New York: Harper &
>Row, 1988. Pages 160-161.
>
>     The victory of 1967 led certain extremists to the belief
>     that the age had in fact come when Israel was stronger than
>     the nations of the world, or nearly so.  Maimonides
>     explained that the restrictions on idolators (identified
>     with non-Jews in general) are applicable only in such a
>     period: "The foregoing rules applied to the time when the
>     people of Israel lived reviled among the nations, or when
>     the gentiles' power is predominant. But when Israel is
>     predominant over the nations of the world, we are forbidden
>     to permit a gentile who is an idolator to dwell among us"
>     (_Avoda Zara_, 10:6). Thus Maimonides distinguished between
>     two periods: when "the nations of the world are stronger
>     than Israel," and their wrath is to be feared, and when
>     "Israel is stronger than the nations of the world," and may
>     treat them in a high-handed manner.
>
>     Thus the alteration in the theological climate derives from
>     the change in the political climate, whose most conspicuous
>     expression is the endorsement of power-politics in the
>     spirit of the Jabotinsky-Begin ethos, and thus the judgement
>     that the political and military situation permits a policy
>     aimed at annexing the territories occupied in 1967. The
>     adoption of a provocative attitude toward non-Jews is also
>     consonant with this ethos. Thus, nationalistic religious
>     Jews have an interest in seeing the supporters of the
>     Jabotinsky-Begin ethos amass political power and hold the
>     reins of government. The claim that they support Likud
>     because of the subventions they receive is only part of the
>     truth; there are strong ideological affinities as well.
>     Thus religious extremism is not an indigenous theological
>     growth engendered by religious developments: it is a product
>     of historical and political factors.
>
>     The common adoration of power links extremist nationalist
>     religion and the Jabotinsky-Begin ethos....
>
>These particular Maimonidian ideas are of relevance to
>contemporary Israel, as you can see.
>
>Do you have any cogent remarks to make about Harkabi's analysis?
>His book has been read carefully and respectfully by many
>Americans in the national security community, I've heard.

     As the last election in Israel has shown, "extremist
nationalist religion" as viewed by Harkabi is popular with only a
tiny minority of Israelis today. I believe Sprinzak has also stated
that even among the settlers, only a minority support forcible
transfer of the Palestinians.

     Like Harkabi's previous passage, this passage also quotes
Maimonides selectively. His ruling pertains only to idolators, but
not to non-Jews who have accepted the seven basic commandments of the
Sons of Noah: the ban on idolatry, blasphemy, theft, incest, murder
and the eating of flesh torn from a live animal, and institution of
courts to enforce these laws. Any non-Jew who accepts this
basic code of humane conduct is permitted to live in the Land
of Israel even when Israel is stronger and in control. Since
Maimonides ruled explicitly that Muslims are not idolators,
they would be eligible to qualify as Sons of Noah under these
circumstances (i.e. when Israel is stronger and in control).
In the Laws of Kings, Maimonides tells us how to act towards
these people, who are also called "resident converts" (gerei
toshav):

   "... And it would seem to me that we deal with resident converts
    in good manners and charity as with an Israelite, for we are
    commanded to sustain them ... Even the heathens, the Sages
    commanded to visit their sick, and to bury their dead with
    the dead of Israel, and to support their poor together with
    the poor of Israel for the ways of peace, for it is said,
    'The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is on all his works',
    and it is said, 'Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its
    paths are peace'".

Shalom,

Shaul Wallach
Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:26344 rec.arts.books:26517 soc.culture.turkish:15111