The truth is, there are no ‘innocents’ in Gaza

With all the discussion of a hostage “deal,” an overarching factor seems to be ignored: Israel is required to provide 600 aid trucks to enter Gaza over the next six weeks. Why? Because of all the “innocent” victims of this war who have been deprived of their freedom, livelihood, food and shelter.

Who are these “innocent” victims? Where are they? How many are there?

Let’s say there are some, but they are too intimidated and afraid to come forward. What is our responsibility? Do we have to act like Avraham Avinu did with S’dom and beseech Hashem to spare them if we can find 50, 40, 30 or even 10 innocents (Bereishit 18: 28-32)?

The question is as ludicrous as it is morally inverted.

Avraham was not threatened by S’dom. He was made aware of Hashem’s plans to destroy the city and pleaded on their behalf as a man of chesed . Had he been threatened, attacked or put in danger he would have had every right to defeat and destroy his enemy and certainly, not bargain with Hashem to spare them. The proof is seen in Avraham’s response to the hostage taking of his nephew Lot and his family (Bereishit 14:14). He went to war!

What, then, about the idea of collective punishment? Should these imaginary Gazan “innocents” be killed along with their guilty counterparts?

Guidance around this false equivalency and moral inversion is easily available in our holy Torah. In this week’s parsha, Vaera, Hashem inflicts seven plagues on Egypt after Pharoah refuses to act when given repeated opportunities to release His people from bondage. These plagues spread devastatingly over all of Egypt — there was no inquiry of whether Egyptian “innocents” should be spared, no “humanitarian” aid was provided to those whose leaders ordered the death and persecution of multitudes of the Children of Israel.

• • •

Parshat Shoftim in sefer Devarim, chapter 20, is clear: “When you go to war“ and “come up to a city to do battle with it,” you are instructed to ask your enemy to make peace — but if they refuse, you can make war and “besiege them.”

Rashi there says you can “starve them, deprive them of water and kill them with mortal disease” (and that is allowed in a milchemet reshut, a discretionary war — so it would be moreso in a war of defense against an avowed enemy, a milchemet mitzvah).

All agree that in a milchemet mitzvah, a biblically mandated war such as a war of self-defense, no humanitarian measures are required. In fact, it is expressly forbidden!: “Lo tachos eincha aleihem, your eye shall not have pity upon them” (Devarim 7:16).

Israel is engaged in battle with an enemy that has attacked it in the most barbaric ways imaginable, and has said that if they had the chance, “would do it 1000 times more.” In what insane, morally upsidedown universe do we have to provide humanitarian aid to such an adversary?

If I had any one of my loved ones trapped in Gaza, and I could use any possibility to get them out, I would do so. Yet I am concerned that deviation from Torah true principles always ends badly.

This is a time where prayers are more powerful than protests. I pray that Hashem sees this as an et la’ssot la’Shem, a time when some halachic dictates are temporarily suspended for a greater good, and He mercifully grants us the positive results we so desperately seek.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dr. Alan A. Mazurek is a retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida. He is a former chairman of the ZOA. To reach him, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com