In the Jewish calendar, this is the week in which the holiday of Shavuot is celebrated. It is called in the ancient prayerbook the Time of the Giving of Our Torah, and the Torah reading on that day is of the Exodus text in which the Ten Commandments are given on Sinai.
Israel is upholding the most fundamental of human rights and acting on the most fundamental of societal imperatives.
The laws and the ideas in the Torah have spread their influence far and wide. Its sensibility of humans as being created in the image of God inspires freedom-loving people everywhere.
At the top of one of the two tablets was the prohibition on murder. And some simple attention to what the protection of human life means would clean up a great deal of the chaos in our world. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: As John Adams Knew, We Must Hold To Received Traditions)
Blood is protected. It is the fundamental protection given to humans. Without life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are meaningless abstractions. Taking of life is a sin of the first magnitude, if only because, unlike sins most other sins against our fellows, we cannot restore the victim to wholeness in any way at all.
The blood of others is like our own. “Do not stand by the blood of your fellow,” Leviticus directs, these terse words meaning not only that threats to the lives of others must be our concern but that standing, that is, inaction, is not an acceptable response.
In the in-depth discussions that the comprise much of the Talmud, this imperative is taken up and fleshed out in terms of practical law. It rules that in the case of someone pursuing another with murder or rape in mind, “it is a mitzva (that is, an imperative) to get the jump on them to kill them.”
The meaning is that it is not only an option but rather it is necessary to take pre-emptive action. The preference of biblical law is not to sit back and let murder happen and then prosecute the matter in court, but to stop it from happening altogether. Of course, the law specifies that the minimum of force necessary to accomplish the task should be used, but the task must be accomplished even if it requires nothing less than deadly force.
This idea is present in the Biblical phrase “his blood is on his head.” This means that the murderer has removed from himself the protection God has granted all humans, and there is no guilt in taking his.
The Talmud is telling us that the moment that protection is removed is the moment the person has committed himself to the act of murder. God does not require the murder to happen but prefers that it does not happen. Therefore, we do not give murderers a tactical advantage of always getting the jump. Their intentions made clear, we must act to do what they will not — not allow murder to happen.
There is an interesting point that is implicit in the Talmud’s language on this point. The Hebrew says, translated literally, one must “get up earlier to kill him” [that is, the would-be murderer] when it could well have said “get up earlier and kill him.” This word choice is significant, as it teaches us the idea of deterrence. When it becomes known that people will be ready to use deadly force as necessary in defense of life, it becomes less necessary to use it. This is deterrence.
When murder and mayhem are not resisted, when they are not vigorously anticipated and deterred, they will fill up the absence of will. Nature abhors a vacuum, especially the natural murderer that looks for the chinks in the armor of civilization.
Rousseauian romanticism about human nature has led to dreamers to erect their utopias on piles of human bones. They turn to violence inevitably as the struggle to be civilized is an internal one and must be fought and won each day. Without the covenant passed on to us by those who preceded, we would never exit from barbarity and chaos. We preserve the legacy of insight, inspiration, and law that are passed to us from those whose humanity is just like ours and who cared enough to turn away from selfishness to live a life devoted to a larger self, one that includes us and our own posterity. (READ MORE: Biden Distracts Americans. Turns on Israel With New Ceasefire Proposal)
Foremost of the imperatives that they passed down is the one to construct a society in which life is valued and in which you use whatever deterrent is necessary to make that value govern. This includes having to override the choices of those who choose to murder and rape, even if they don’t like it. Even if a lot of others also don’t like the idea and squawk about it in the UN.
Israel is upholding the most fundamental of human rights and acting on the most fundamental of societal imperatives. Its magnificent and bold hostage rescue pre-empted the murderous intent of Hamas; their military pre-empted those who would kill to stop the rescue and to stop the saving of lives.
Yet the Administration is remarkably uncomfortable with this victory of life and deterrence of murder and rapine.
Under Biden and Obama, we have forgotten the necessity to pre-empt and to deter. The result has been a world in chaos. The policy towards Israel has shown a lack of clear purpose, unnecessarily confusing gaseous wishful thinking with the hard urgent choices that response to the cold-blooded ideological murderers requires.
By failing to pre-empt, by handicapping Israel’s response to the would-be exterminators, Biden and his Obamanik crew have encouraged the murderers and prolonged the war and spilled far more blood than was ever necessary.
But that is what Obama did in his pathetic response to ISIS and to Assad and his poison gas. That is what Biden did in his humiliating and unnecessary skedaddle from Afghanistan, forcing Americans to behave as if we had been routed. That is what they both continue to do by the spineless appeasement of the Iranian mullahs.
In failing to act, in thinking that only good intentions and fine dreams are required, they have failed in their duty and in their own aims. This whole bloody mess was unnecessary. There is an example of four years of a presidency in which precious little bloodshed took place and in which the stock of the exterminationists went bust.
It can be done. We have the evidence.
If our current leaders can’t make better choices, let’s make better choices ourselves.
