Going to war against the dark forces that lie within

It was the height of the Intifada, and we were in the midst of a months’ worth of reserve duty....It is so easy to demonize the ‘enemy,’ but life isn’t always quite so simple.

Deep in the heart of Hebron was an Israeli lookout position, meant to spot trouble on the road below and protect Israeli civilians driving through.

Every day, when kids from the local village got out of school, a hail of rocks, bricks, and bottles would come sailing through the air up onto the lookout post, endangering and sometimes injuring the few Israeli soldiers manning the position. Every time they would call local patrols in to try to catch the perpetrators, they would be long gone by the time the troops arrived.

One day, we decided to try a more innovative approach. The village where this rock throwing was taking place was on the side of a hill above a beautiful valley, so we decided we would hike up the valley arriving at the top of the village late in the morning, when everyone was already in school, and wait for the rock throwing to begin.

Our plan worked. By 12:15 we were in place behind the stone wall above the village, and the lookout post was clued in to let us know as soon as any action started. About 1 PM, the bottles and rocks started flying and we came out of cover, running down the hill. Suddenly, a frantic cry over the radio alerted us that they had spotted a masked terrorist (“Ra’ul Panim”) down an alley, out of range.

This was a serious matter; the men who wore those masks were usually members of the death squads that terrorized Arab and Israeli civilians alike….I took off down the alley following the directions via radio from the lookout post.

Coming around a corner, I spotted him, waving something akin to a medieval mace above his head with one hand, and holding a Palestinian flag with the other. He turned and saw me, dropped the flag and the ball-and-chain, and took off down the street.

As I was running down the side of a hill, he was lower than me, and I could only see the top of his body as he ran. After a couple of minutes, I saw that he was headed into a maze of alleyways, and, realizing I was about to lose him, stopped running and aimed my rifle at his back yelling “Stop!” (“Wakef”). Technically speaking, in that situation, as he was a masked terrorist, once ordering him to stop I could shoot to kill to prevent his escape. I guess he realized this, and stopped running. To this day, I thank G-d he stopped, because when I got close enough to pull off his mask, I discovered he was an eight-year-old boy. Was this the enemy we were fighting against?

This week’s portion, Ki Tetzeh, seems to relate to this issue: “Ki Tetzeh Le’milchama Al Oye’vechah’….”

“ When (If?) you will go out to war against your enemies….” (Devarim 21:10)

There will come a time, suggests the Torah, when you will wage war. And there are specific mitzvoth (commandments) associated with such wars.

It is interesting to note that the verse here does not describe “waging” war; rather it speaks of “going out” to war. Is there some significant difference between fighting a war and “going out to war”?

The conclusion of this verse is: “… U’Netano’ Hashem Elokecha’ Be’Yadecha’, Ve’Shavita Shivyo’.” “And Hashem your G-d will give him (your enemy) into your hands, and you will capture his captives.”

Does this mean: ‘If when you go to war, G-d will make you victorious….’Or perhaps: If you will go to war, then G-d … will make you victorious….

Which is challenging to say the least: why does going out to battle merit, perhaps even guarantee, victory?

And why does the verse add the seemingly moot point that we are going out to war “against our enemies”? Who else would we be fighting against if not our enemies?

Perhaps this is the key to this question.

To wage war, two conditions need to be met: One needs to have enemies, and one needs to be able to identify them. If you don’t know who your enemies are, there is no point in going out to war.

This may well be precisely the challenge we face today: there seems to be some confusion as to whom our enemies are, and whether indeed we need to wage war against them.

They say you don’t make peace with your friends; you have to be willing to make peace with your enemies, which is true. But you also can only make peace with an enemy who wants to make peace. Perhaps this is why no peace has ever been achieved without a war. Sometimes, until you are willing to win a war, you cannot begin the process of creating peace. Indeed, sometimes, the hesitation to fight a war, impedes the pursuit of peace.

We so admire restraint, as a crucial ingredient to compromise and harmony. Yet, imagine if the Allies had shown a little less restraint when Adolph Hitler took over Austria. How many tens of millions of lives might have been saved if America had not waited essentially until 1942, seven long years later, and instead joined forces with England against Germany as early as 1935?

Perhaps this is why the verse speaks of “going out” to war, because going to war in a sense requires us to step a little bit outside of the box we normally occupy.

It is good, in the end, that we live in a world of tremendous desire for peace. And it may well be that the fact that our willingness to wage war is outside of our normal ‘box’ is what guarantees that it will be a war waged in the way only a nation striving to be an ethical light unto the world can hope to achieve.

More than any other experience, war and the battlefield determine whether we really believe that Hashem runs the world. Bullets don’t know about statistics, and if your number is up, it’s up. To run up a hill under enemy fire, you almost have to believe that it has nothing to do with you, because if you really thought your survival depended only on what you did, it would be madness to run up any hill under fire.

Perhaps then, war is almost an opportunity to step outside the reality we are so immersed in, and encounter a degree of truth, which often eludes us. Perhaps this is why we read this portion in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the day when we re-discover the concept of Malchut, royalty, and the idea that it is really G-d who runs the world.

But before confronting the forces of evil and terrorism, we first have to begin with ourselves.

Every one of us, in this month preceding Rosh Hashanah, has an opportunity to go to war. Not against the forces of evil we read about in the papers, but rather against the dark challenges that often lie within.

If we really want this year to be different, if we want who we are to be different, the question is how far we are really willing to step outside of the box each of us has created for ourselves.