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8 Adar II 5760 - March 15, 2000 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Opinion & Comment
Peace and the Importance of Saving Lives

by Rabbi Nosson Grossman

In the middle of February, political commentators relying on what they had heard from those close to the prime minister, Ehud Barak, explained the reason for the government's reluctance at that time to withdraw its soldiers from Lebanon. Despite the danger to the soldiers based there Barak wanted this withdrawal to be linked to the anticipated peace agreement between Israel and Syria. This "package deal" would persuade the Israeli public to vote for it in the public referendum to surrender the Golan Heights.

This disgusting approach reminded us of similar themes we heard some six years ago from a previous prime minister -- the late Yitzhak Rabin. Although at that time Eretz Yisroel suffered from many bloody terrorist attacks, Rabin was the major spokesman for the ongoing negotiations with the Palestinians. Jewish blood was spilt like water during that period. Rabin explained that "for the sake of peace" we have no choice other than to resign ourselves to the unremitting bloodshed and "we must overcome the difficult moments" on the way to realizing the future dream.

Many people were shocked. The prime minister who had initiated the "peace process" which resulted in a wave of terrifying murders openly admits that to achieve peace we must endure a situation that was once described by Ben Gurion as, "The whole land is the battlefront." Rabin's blunt explanation was that we must accustom ourselves to bloodshed "for the sake of peace."

What Rabin had said in his curt manner, another avid supporter of this view said in more detail. A few hours after an attack a renowned professor of the Leftist camp announced in an interview, "In the coming years of the peace process Am Yisroel will have to resign itself to between 150 and 200 killed each year from terrorist attacks."

At that time many living in Eretz Yisroel asked themselves: "Have these people become insane? Don't they see what is happening right in front of their eyes and don't they hear what they are saying? Can any intelligent person resign himself to the absurd idea of such a `bloody peace?' Can one say with such indifference that Jews will, Rachmono litzlan, continue to die, but the political show must go on no matter what the price?"

Such offensive talk unnerves every Jew who was taught the Divine command of not endangering people's lives -- "You shall live by them" (Vayikra 18:5). Apart from critical mistakes in managing the country's international relations, the country's leaders are suffering from a profound moral problem: "Bloodshed is of negligible importance to them" (Yoma 23).

These Jews who have cast off the yoke of Torah do not consider protecting fellow Jews as a top priority. They have more important aims. As far as they are concerned, the murder of 150-200 a year is a "reasonable price" to pay for the "process."

They are using this same approach today with regard to the negotiations for peace and the public referendum. They maintain that the success of the "peace process" justifies endangering soldiers stationed in Lebanon.

Chazal (Pesochim 49) warn us that we should not walk together with a Jew void of Torah. "`For [the Torah] is your life and the length of your days' (Devorim 30:20) -- if he does not have pity on his own life, he surely will not have pity on the life of another." People who never learned the foundations of Judaism and do not have pity enough on their own lives nor on that of their offspring to learn about Torah will certainly have no pity on the lives of others.

The pacesetters of the "peace process" continue their stride even when it obviously causes additional bloodshed, May Hashem protect us. Bloodshed is of insufficient importance to them. They can view coldheartedly the wave of funerals, Rachmono litzlan, of soldiers killed in southern Lebanon although the champions of the "process" themselves fully admit there is no justification for soldiers to remain there any longer except to aid the peace process and to promote a positive answer in any future public referendum.

The gedolei Torah of recent generations demanded that we distance ourselves from heretical movements, even those established, as they claim, to save Am Yisroel. The gedolim warned that these reshoim will not only wreak havoc in spiritual matters, but will also wreck the physical existence of the Jewish Nation.

Their attempts to uproot the Torah "will result in their not bringing benefit to am Yisroel. Since the Jewish Nation and the Holy Torah are one, and fulfilling Torah and mitzvos is our breath of life, any benefit to our material situation can only accrue when the efforts are guided by Torah and mitzvos" (a letter of Maran HaRav Chaim Soloveitchik zt'l of Brisk).

This was evident during the Holocaust. At that time the Zionist leadership turned a deaf ear to the desperate cries of European Jewry, refusing to help them escape mass murder. This historical truth has been proven in recent years in many research projects. The Torah-observant Jews knew this long ago through the letters of HaRav Michel Dov Weismandel zt'l, who endangered his life to save those sent to the Nazi death camps.

The letters from the death camps are full of deep pain and embitterment about the appalling indifference which characterized the secular Zionist leaders who stood by dispassionately, heard the cries of our persecuted brothers, and would not lift up a finger to save them from certain death because of hardheartedness and cynical "political" considerations about the good of the Zionist cause.

HaRav Weismandel writes in Min HaMeitzar that his father-in-law, HaRav Shmuel Dovid Unger zt'l, the av beis din of Nitra, foresaw that the nonbelieving Jewish leadership would close their hearts and ears while their brothers were being slaughtered.

This happened when the idea of bribing Nazi officers to cancel the transport of Jews to death camps was first suggested to him. "He said that we must look for a way to contact rabbonim and other Torah-observant leaders who are afraid of din Torah and not of non-Jewish law, and we should not remotely trust a Jew who has cast away the yoke of Heaven, someone who hates Torah. Especially now, since to this day our cries have not been answered, we must be aware that now will be no different and we must take care to save lives this way even at the cost of millions" (Min HaMeitzar, pg. 64).

HaRav Weismandel continues that later he saw clearly the realization of this awful warning from his father-in-law. "It is now Tammuz, 5702. We did not dream of this happening and I did not want to believe it at all, although I am the devoted talmid and son-in-law of Rabbenu zy'a, who warned me beforehand that this hope would eventually turn into a terrible disappointment. This will happen since secular Jews, about whom Chazal write they are the `audacious among the nations' -- referring to, as the Maharsha writes, Jews without Torah -- control everything. I failed to properly fulfill this important halocho. I did not know or believe this [would happen]. I did not know or believe that their evil heart would cause their hatred of Torah to overcome love of Jews to such a degree. The joy of uprooting the Torah would be stronger than pity that a note written and signed by rabbonim would be a sufficient reason for them to express their wishes to delay saving thousands and thousands from death. At that time, in Tammuz, 5702, I did not know or believe this" (Min HaMeitzar, pg. 111).

Secular Nationalists, irreligious Jews, who are leading the Jewish Nation to its lowest rung, will eventually ignore the mitzvah of, "You shall not stand aside while your fellow's blood is shed" (Vayikra 19:16). This is the reason for the indifference of the meisisim when they see the blood spilt -- both at the time of the Holocaust and in our days.

We need not mention again that Maranan verabonon ztvk'l and ylct'a always maintained that the consideration of preventing bloodshed is of top priority. Our Torah Sages therefore opposed the nationalist provocations of the early Zionist Movement and supported instead negotiations with the Arabs to ease the mutual hatred and tension. Because of this approach, our paper -- and this writer in particular -- warned against the dangerous Rightist nationalist trends in which the consideration of "not giving up even one inch" is stronger than pikuach nefesh. Although in the past we had to contend with the "national flag" of "not one inch" that according to misled Jews overrides "You shall live in them," a parallel perversion among the Leftists has recently come into being. Because of their enthusiasm to prove the uniqueness of their approach to international affairs they have turned to the other extreme and have transformed the matter of peace to an abstract magic word severed from its essence and real objective of any political arrangements: preventing bloodshed.

It is common knowledge that the Torah-true do not support peace as a utopian concept, or as some overriding goal. Our support of peace is only because it prevents bloodshed. "Peace" as nothing more than a hackneyed slogan, a "process" that does not prevent bloodshed and perhaps even causes increased danger, is not the peace we support. The frightening and impossible concept innovated during the period of the Rabin government called "peace sacrifices," the current idea of keeping soldiers deployed in the north and endangering their lives only "because of the peace and the public referendum" evokes horror among anyone who was brought up with the Divine command of "You shall live in them."

We oppose both the radicals of the Right and the dreamers of the Left. Both groups have "values" that override, for them, considerations of saving lives. The Right prefers to endanger the lives of Jews for "not even one inch" and the Left is prepared to pave the way with corpses for the sake of the "peace process." When the gemora writes that, "Bloodshed is of negligible importance to them" it refers to both groups. The slogan of secular Zionists was in the past: "Only through blood will we gain the land" and their followers have invented a new revolting one: "Only through blood will we achieve peace."


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