A student once asked R. Zvi Yehuda Kook, why we preach and act with such tolerance and love to bring our fellow Jews closer to the Torah ideals, but don’t do the same with our Arab adversaries? He answered: Of course we want to befriend all mankind, but with those who hate us, we must do so at first, with the aid of tanks.
His father Rav Kook writes similarly, that the mitzva of rebuke (Vayikra 19, 17) is to do so in a way that it will really help. Don’t yell in French to one who doesn’t understand that language, and don’t throw rocks at Jews who drive on Shabbat. Don’t speak gently to those Arabs who idealize and are even proud of slaughtering non-Moslems, for their mindset doesn’t yet understand our language. It’s not beneficial to them, and surely not for us.
Israel wanted to believe that the Hamas was deterred, but wishful thinking doesn’t bring security. We want peace, but if we never carry out our threat, our enemies simply take advantage. In the present, we must “speak in Arabic”.
R. Kook writes that with the advantage of having the G-dly Torah, in the Tanach, Israel was always several generations more moral than the primitive nations. But King David advanced them realistically, not pretending or projecting that all others see the world as we do in his gentle Tehilim. Our heroes deterred the primitive tribes in the Tanach “in their language”, and this advice is true and beneficial until today.
The Middle-East is not the Mid-West. The U.N. and Obama think that it takes 2 to tangle (YouTube Dershowitz’s recent gutsy Kiddush Hashem in answering the former president). But if in Syria, Lybia and Egypt the culture condones civil war with each other and “unilateral” daughter-killings, so it’s laughably naïve to think they will “stam” simply love us more than their own, without bringing in some “game-changer”.
No human is inherently evil (we actually have IDF Moslems with us in fighting the fanatic Moslims) and we do believe that all of the Arabs, as all mankind, will eventually be good. Sadly, they leave us no choice but to hasten their maturation process, by swiftly showing them that evil doesn’t pay. Judaism believes that we must show that savagery not only loses out morally, but also militarily (addressing the foundation of their mindset). If they would leave us alone, we would not have to deal with this issue, but unfortunately, they leave us no alternative but to deter them with tanks and F-15’s.
Modern Christian Europe tries “turning the other cheek”, which is seen in Islam as a weakness. Rav Kook explains the beauty of Judaism is that we reduce the exaggerated and chauvinistic Gevura of Islam, but contrarily enhance Gevura to the “pushover” naïve Christians (Orot, p. 153). Without this, Europe is losing a one-sided (!) war against the new-coming Moslems (who ironically bring the culture from which they fled in the Middle East, easily overtaking the over-tolerant Europeans demographically, forcing those governments to placate them for electoral purposes).
Contrarily, Judaism as is clear from the Tanach, doesn’t believe in going like sheep to slaughter. Historically, while the Jews were battling the pagan and immoral Romans, Jesus was wandering the Judean desert with his ascetic friends theoretically contemplating “how to be good”, with teachings like “resist not evil”. The rabbis both philosophically and practically, rejected his pacifistic approach and we fight evil, for when Am Yisrael is at war, the definition of goodness, morality and kindness is to save and help your brothers from their ruthless enemies, not stand idly by their blood (Vayikra 19, 16), but rather deter the evil.
On our parsha of Chayei Sarah, our rabbis actually write that Yishmael ends up doing teshuva. We truly hope that the Abraham-Accords can be a first sign of such a peaceful future, but we cannot yet naively lay down our sword and shield.
Yes, Judaism is unique in our “middle” approach, balancing and harmonizing the good from both philosophies (in kabbalistic terms: Christianity’s over-chessed+ and Islam’s over-gevura) through being both moral and practical by “resisting evil”. It’s moral to fight evil in Israel’s “war against wars”, to, at least for the time being, bezrat Hashem “mekarev” them with the help of Merkava tanks. Just as they give us no other choice, we should conversely show them there is no alternative to being a “mentch”.
With Love of Israel, Shabbat Shalom! Rav Ari Shvat (Chwat)
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