As Israel labored to dislodge Hamas terrorists from bunkers underneath the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, a peculiar photograph saturated newsfeeds otherwise filled with images of supposed Israeli atrocities: stacks of cardboard boxes labeled “Medical Supplies” that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were delivering to the hospital to alleviate suffering.
What kind of army supplies saline drips, infant formula, food, and fuel to an enemy population? What country provides its adversaries with advance notice of airstrikes to protect civilians controlled by its adversary? What type of people consistently far exceed their obligations under international law—even if doing so makes them no friends in a hostile world?
The IDF, Israel, and the Jewish people, that’s who. In Ethics of Our Fighters, a sober and penetrating analysis of how to apply traditional Jewish sources to warfighting, the ethicist and scholar Shlomo Brody skillfully engages with real-world examples of how we have grappled with and constructively implemented the wisdom of our forefathers.
Characterizing his book at “the first attempt in Hebrew or English to present a systematic Jewish perspective on military ethics,” Brody concedes that “classic Jewish sources do not speak at great length about the ethics of warfare.” (Disclosure: Brody is my friend and former schoolmate.) Instead, he begins his exploration by surveying the views of prominent early twentieth-century scholars whom the traumatic events of the Great War, Arab violence in Palestine, and the emerging Holocaust compelled to develop theories of waging war ethically.
Shuls of Thought
One school of thought, embodied by
