Judaism and Just War Theory
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- A conversation with Phil Lieberman, a rabbi, scholar, and naval officer.
Phil's great new Guide for the Perplexed: amzn.to/3M0hxFI
See also here: amzn.to/3M0hBFs
Maimonides' laws of war can be found here: www.chabad.org...
Check out my substack:
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Last but not least:
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“Never think that war is not a crime not matter how justified the cause. If you think war is not a crime ask the infantry. Ask the dead.” Hemmingway. For whom the bell tolls.
0:47 "just war theory"
Excellent timing! The Palestinians' struggle for equality is a perfect example of a just war.
3:01"defend itself"
Hmm, I'm 65 and I haven't seen Israel ever "defend" anything. Israel has been on the offense of an ethnic cleansing campaign my whole life. Are you implying that constantly ethnically cleansing innocent civilians is related to "defense"? How?
6:09 "Empire"
Here you completely subsume your own ethics. Empires can't engage in just war since their existence depends on injustice. "Nations" can engage in just wars. Empires. Can't ethically or legally defend against their captives fighting for equality. This, of course, the situation in Palestine, where European colonists are engaging in genocide because their captives gave Israel a small excuse, that Israel magnified with lies (such as pretending that it isn't just Israel who mass rapes and tortured captives.
But remember, when IDF soldiers cowardly and illegally donned civilian clothes to slaughter hundreds of Innocents? Not hostages, but a few of counter-hostages were found, not in a dungeon being raped and tortured, which is standard procedure in Israeli detention of Palestinian hostages, but being given hospitality. The counter-hostages were literally treated like guests right in Palestinians' homes! Talk about just warfare, eh?
6:36 "when you were wandering in the desert"
Again, put your brain in. How would the Amalekites find the Israelis? How would they survive without manna from heaven? I haven't heard this harassing murder claim before, likely because there's no physical way for your claim to be true.
7:56 Saul was garbage, eh? And your talk is labeled "just war" yet you didn't address the inhumanity and brutality of the deity character in the book. Seriously, you actually accept genocide as the best first example of moral warfare?!?
8:53 dude, such a one-sided tale. Mutual tribal raiding, you describe, but then you casually remove "mutual" from the story. Why? Bigotry appears the most likely reason. Are you subscribing to the concept of Superior and inferior Races? ::::shudder:::
9:45 "a war of expansion"
The only type of war Israel has ever fought. Can you list an exception? Israel always violates the first ethical rule: expanding one's territory through war is Wrong no matter who one thinks started it. Then again, so is genocide and here you are celebrating genocide.
I'm going to go. You should buy some ethics instead of searching old texts for excuses. A century of ethnic cleansing culminating in genocide.. sorry, but I can't stomach any more. Thumbs down.
Oh, friend, thou dost read too much into a video about a 12th century Spanish rabbi's presentation of purely hypothetical laws that are in vigor nowhere.
1. The Palestinians have their own state already so I don't know why they would be fighting for freedom with no intervention from Israel.
2. You are clearly ignoring the majority of the conflicts that they faced against their Arab wars. Examples: Yom Kippur, Independence War, 6 day war, Lebanon-Israel War.
3. Now you are ignoring history again. The Jews in ancient history haven't engaged in any wars unless it was self defense. Until the rise of Muhammadism also known as Islam, they expanded all areas in the Middle East after Muhammad's death and the expulsion of Jews from their homeland by either driving them out with laws and non muslim taxation and being forced to convert. Israeli's are a Diaspora that were chased out of their homeland by Islamists, and they aren't just Europeans. They are a mix of Maghreb Arabs, Middle Eastern Arabs, Caucasians, Ethiopians, Hebrew Israelites, and Indians. If you think that Israel is just Europeans, you need to actually do more research in the country. Also, the "freedom fighters" commit the same thing as the ones you accuse the Israeli's of, the IDF is composed of professionals. What are Hamas fighters composed of?
4. There is no genocide in Palestine, if so explain why the country from 1950s did the population increase by almost 1500%? Because there is no genocide. There is no apartheid, as there have been 100 Arabs (Both Muslim and non) in the Parliment. They are not barred from entering the military as there is an increase in volunteering into the military from Arabs.
5. While they did expand into the Sinai, they gave back the territory for peace with Egypt in the 1960s for peace. What makes you think they are expansionists when they gave away almost half their territory at that time to Egypt for peace?
Your comment is just an emotional blabbering of misinterpretation, which is weird considering you are 65.
@@sirkermitthefirstoffrogeth9622 one shekel to you sir. mossad pays
@Harry-qu7vg at least 1 shekel has more value than 1000 Palestinian dinars 🤣
@@michaelshurkin613 Very weak response. Again.
The question is how is any response “proportional”? The job of the infantry is to destroy the enemy and take and hold ground. You don’t do that by being “proportional”. Police use proportional force that is assessed in a court room. Once you are in war proportional force is no longer relevant. The British bombing campaign under Bomber Harrison against Germany wasn’t proportional but theirs was still a “just” war as it stopped Nazism. The US use of napalm in WW2 and Korea wasn’t proportional but theirs was still a “just” war as it stopped Nazism, Japanese imperialism and Communism.
I agree. I think proportionality is a bull shit concept that does not apply in the real world.
Remember the Maine. All wars are just. Did anyone ever start a war saying it was unfair and unjust?
Not to my knowledge.
@@michaelshurkin613 The moment the reaction is disproportional it becomes unjust and unfair, its a good way to start.
Exceptionalism is not a good starting point, we are always exceptional.