"[...]
In truth, the lack of violence among these survivors warrants examination. Why deny it? There were numerous victims who, before dying, ordered him or her who would survive to avenge their death. Vengeance: the word that, graven on every wall of every jail, expressed the passion, the hope they all shared. Vengeance: the motto, the testament, the rallying call. Inside the death camps, the underground shelters, facing the gallows, that was the word that the heroes and martyrs bequeathed to future generations. And yet . . . with rare exceptions, the survivors forced themselves to sublimate their mandate for revenge.
[...]
For the Jewish people, war was never considered ''holy." In our tradition,
war is always presented as an aberration, a denial of God's name.
[...]
Naturally, Jewish history has recorded the exploits of such heroes as Samson,
Saul, David, Judah Maccabee, Bar-Kochba, and we are taught to admire and love
them, yet though we are proud of them, we know that they are not examples to be
followed. They are to be loved, but from a distance. We sing David's psalms but
we are somehow embarrassed by his militarist outlook; we prefer him in the role
of romantic shepherd. This attitude is borne out by the fact that while David
conquered the city of God, the Temple was built by his son, Solomon. Why? David
had shed too much blood. Granted, he had no choice he was ordered to fight and
kill the enemies. Still, he who has shed blood, even for a just cause, may not
be the architect of a sanctuary of peace. The Talmud does not hesitate to
criticize him for having waged battles that were not absolutely necessary. Of the
eighteen wars David fought, only thirteen were for the sake of his people; the
rest he fought for his own glory. We admire the courage of the Maccabees, but
the Hanukkah holiday symbolizes divine intervention as well as Hasmonean bravery.
The men who led our armies were never considered saints. The concept of war
linked to saintliness is alien and blasphemous to us. Killing, no matter what
the reasons or the circumstances, is an act unworthy of man. In our tradition a
Saint-Louis would be quite inconceivable. Milkhemet reshut [optional/discretionary
war] or milkhemet khova
[mandatory/obligatory war],
war, whether obligatory
or arbitrary, may not be undertaken unless all other means have been exhausted.
The law is explicit: war must be the ultimate resort, the last option. Hence
war-related legislation is aimed solely at the avoidance of armed conflict.
Maimonides insists that if a Jewish army encircles an enemy army, it must leave
it a way out, and not force it to engage in combat. Before he invaded the land
of Canaan, Joshua sent its leaders three letters appealing for their help in
preventing bloodshed. Better to prevent war than to win it. The first war in
history opposed two brothers, Cain and Abel. Thus the first death in history
was a result of a kind of war, a fratricidal war—as are all wars. And God
refused to be a partner. He did not order Cain to kill Abel—or Abel to accept
his fate. It was a human project, a human impulse, a senseless, brutal conflict
that turned two brothers into killer and victim. Their story is ugly, as all
war is ugly. There is cold, calculating brutality in war; there is madness as
well. In war, primitive instinct dominates all else; it is the victory of the
irrational, the victory of death. Read the story of mankind's first genocide
and you will see that war for us has always represented absolute evil and
chaos. Man reverts to primary darkness, thus imperiling the future. War has
always been a convenient pretext, invoked so as to abolish all laws and give
man license to lie, shame, humiliate and kill. In its name, man feels free to
violate social contracts and divine commandments. He thus turns life into a vast
simplification: on the one side the good, who must live; on the other, the
wicked, who must die. To wage war successfully, man must assume a godlike
stance and wear His mask—to be, like Him, above the law.
[...]
Perhaps it would now be useful to study one episode which on the surface seems to contradict my thesis on Jewish attitudes toward war and the enemy. Warsaw ghetto chroniclers and historians recall that on the first day of the armed uprising the fighters were jubilant; they congratulated one another, embraced one another. They laughed and cried and danced with joy at the sight of German casualties. But before you judge them, consider this. These fighters were youngsters, and in those dark days and sleepless nights they were the ones who carried Jewish destiny on their shoulders. They were not denying their Jewish tradition. Their exuberance did not reflect the warrior's thirst for vengeance. They were jubilant not because their enemies were lying dead in the street, but because they had eliminated a threat. For months and months the German officers and soldiers had paraded through the ghetto streets like invincible, immortal gods. That was the impression they had sought to produce, and they had succeeded. For their victims, driven to despair and death by hunger and fear, it would have been easy to conclude that God was the enemy. Worse: that the enemy was God. Then suddenly, on April 19, 1943, after the first day of battle, the gods of yesterday proved to be mortal and vulnerable; they bled and died—just like their victims. That is why the Jewish fighters were carried away by joy—they were happy not because they had killed the enemy but because the enemy could be killed.
[...]
Wars ravage the world. Yesterday's ideals are smashed;
yesterday's rebels seek respite. The age of hypocrisy has been succeeded by
that of indifference, which is worse, for indifference corrupts and appeases:
it kills the spirit before it kills the body. It has been stated before, it
bears repeating: the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
[…]"
Elie Wiesel in A Jew Today, 1978
