The Jewish way to kill terrorists

The image of a man grinning behind a dark beard as he drives a green jeep appears on the screen.

“This terrorist is smiling at the camera and he knows that in five minutes he will be 500 small pieces,” explained Israeli Colonel Ben Zion Gruber.

Gruber, a computer engineer and father of five from Efrat, is vice commander of 20,000 troops in the Israeli Defense Force’s armored division. He spoke at Shalhevet High School for Girls on Thursday in a presentation on combat ethics and the IDF’s unique method of dealing with terrorists embedded in a civilian population.

“What are the guidelines for taking a decision in the field?” Gruber asked the 38 students that comprise Shalhevet’s student body. “A soldier has eight seconds to decide: terrorist or not.”

The footage continued with Gruber’s commentary: the terrorist’s attempts to drive the stolen, bomb-laden vehicle across the trench that marks the Gaza-Israel border. His target is a busload of children. The terrorist is delayed and while the bus makes its way across the road, the terrorist’s comrades draw Israeli fire from a nearby pillbox. The would-be bomber careens toward the gate of a nearby town. Hearing gunfire, the security guard drives his armored Humvee out of the gate to block the terrorist’s approach and fires from behind its reinforced door. The jeep crashes and explodes with plumes of smoke and flames shooting 20 feet into the air.

Gruber arrived ten minutes later to find the security guard behind the door of his Humvee, alive, but missing his legs.

While Gruber spoke, he answered questions from the attentive audience. He stood in his olive uniform, a knitted yarmulke on his head, and pointed at a chart of guidelines for soldiers in the field. The first was “distinction.” Don’t harm the innocent, but Gruber asked, how do you know who is innocent?

To illustrate his point, Gruber brought up a film of a man on a stretcher, a Kalashnikov rifle lying by his side. A hand quickly snatches the gun away, and the terrorist became a civilian.

The second guideline is necessity, which Gruber explained means force should be used solely for the purposes of accomplishing the mission. The third, proportionality, means collateral damage in proportion to the threat, he explained. To illustrate this point, Gruber showed footage of a terrorist in a group of people. An Israeli sniper was waiting for the terrorist to cross the street in order to take a clear shot without endangering civilians. The terrorist grabs a child by his backpack and drags him across the street, throwing him aside as he enters a crowd.

Gruber describes a vast network of tunnels under Gaza’s borders threaded with electricity, lights and communication systems; some are large enough for trucks to drive through. To prevent weapons smuggling and kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, Gruber said, the tunnels need to be destroyed. 225 tunnels lead from over 800 houses in Rafah, the southern border of Gaza to Egypt, he said. The procedure followed by Israel is to warn residents 48 hours prior to an attack by raining leaflets on the site. Phone calls followed by text messages to the residents follow at 24 hours to the attack as well as five minutes before. If the roof is empty, the IDF destroys the building and its tunnel. Often the terrorists force neighbors to fill the roofs and the army then calls off the attack. Gruber also pointed out that terrorists booby trap buildings and use UN ambulances as shields and getaway vehicles.

“It’s unthinkable to warn the enemy,” Gruber said. “But we are doing it. We are Jews. We don’t want to kill children. We don’t shoot ambulances. We warn them so we don’t kill civilians.”

“We are losing the media war,” he declared to the Shalhevet students. “You can be part of this army. Spread this message.”

Rabbi Zev Friedman, Rosh Yeshiva of Shalhevet and of Rambam Mesivta, added: “Write letters to the editor, emails and blogs. We have to help him in what he does to insure the survival of Am Yisrael.”

As a commander, Gruber said he attempts to insure that his men do not lose sight of chesed. He described how his unit adopted 30 institutions and invites them to observe maneuvers and eat with the soldiers and families once a month, a tradition he has carried on for 27 years. As a child of Holocaust survivors, Gruber serves with pride.

Israel “gave us the favor [of] protecting our families,” he said.