Gaza: the Jewish prohibition of the slaughter of inocents

Israel’s war on Gaza has abandoned all the moral standards of Judaism. Its illegal blockade has made the evacuation of children impossible, and the traumas of those who survive will be felt in Israel and the West for decades to come. The moral degradation of Israel cannot be separated from US influence.

 We know that there are rules that govern ‘kosher’ ways of killing animals for human food in Jewish religion, but what about the killing of children in war? They are of course, not killed by cannibals to be eaten, nevertheless Jewish theology has given thought to this since ancient times. A helpful discussion by Rabbi Norman Solomon was published in 2005 in the “International Review of the Red Cross” (Volume 87, Number 858), titled: Judaism and the ethics of war.

Solomon takes a historical perspective on the way that ethics have developed, starting with the book of Deuteronomy, 3,000 years ago, noting that the rules of conduct during a war came before the rules justifying starting a war.

These rules specified that while men who refuse an offer of peace shall be killed, women and children are taken prisoner, and that during a siege, food trees shall not be cut down. The trees were seen as food for the attacking army, but Solomon points out that environmental conservation and mercy towards a defeated enemy are enduring principles. The wanton destruction of orchards in the West Bank is shown in shocking reality in the 2024 film “No other land”, and in a report based on statistics from April this year, the UN stated that less than 5% of cropland in Gaza is now available for cultivation.

Reflecting on the desirability of peace, a 16th-century-theologian comments that “the outcome of war is at best uncertain and at worst catastrophic”. In the period following the European Enlightenment, Solomon acknowledges that Jews participated in all the changes in how war was viewed, taking into account the mass destruction that motorized armies are capable of; that promoting religion is not a valid cause; that new international organizations exist to moderate and govern wars; that all nations have the right to self-government, and colonization is discredited.

 Two conflicting views

Following the Russian pogroms in 1903 Jewish attitudes began to divide into two camps, according to Solomon, and in 1920 the Haganah, which later became the IDF was formed to assuage anxiety about possible attacks from neighbouring Arab states. Some religious authorities were alarmed by this turn towards military methods, saying that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ was an absolute demand of the Torah, but others referred to the same book, arguing that no part of the land of Eretz Israel (Greater Israel) should be voluntarily given up once settled by Jews. This is the argument of the current settler movements.

The general principle of proportionality in war nowadays is expressed in the foundation document of the Israeli army: “…IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their

power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.”

A recent article by Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discusses the need to demonstrate intent before genocide can be proved, and concludes that this insistence is counter-productive, and that Israel is indeed engaging in genocide in Gaza. The Jewish rabbinical tradition requires the care and protection of children, especially orphans.

Ehud Olmert, an ex-Prime Minister of Israel stated recently that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. And this is not just a question of Netanyahu and his Zionist Government*, because a recent poll found that 82% of the Israeli population want Palestinians expelled from Gaza. And recently a provocative march by people waving the Israeli flag was allowed to pass through the old city of Jerusalem. And settlers continue to steal Palestinian land with impunity.

In 2022, a year before the Gaza war began, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories concluded that Israel was committing the crime of Apartheid.

 The children suffer

In previous wars the evacuation of children was a priority, but the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza has made this impossible. In 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, 30,000 children were evacuated to various European countries and Mexico, and the British even sent a gunboat to ensure that Franco’s forces were not tempted to sink the boats, a story recently told in part in a documentary film, reported in The Prisma.

There were several evacuations of children from Sarajevo during the Bosnian war of 1992-95, including one by a Jewish organisation which rescued children of all religions. The film “Welcome to Sarajevo” also told this story.

In 1999, NATO planes bombed Serbia during their war against Kosovo, to the loud disapproval of the Left, but they ended the war, and its leaders were put on trial for war crimes.

It seems impossible to find statistics on the numbers of children who may have been evacuated from Gaza during this war, and in part that must be due to the fact that there have been so few. An indication of this was given by a recent report that Jordan was willing to receive some severely injured Palestinian children for treatment in their hospitals – the number of children was 29. And although a planned 2,000 were to be evacuated to Jordan for emergency treatment, they are being sent back when the treatment is completed, a full day’s journey to Gaza where they were met by troops and armoured vehicles that terrified the children.

Anecdotally GINA (Gaza Infant Nutrition Alliance) has confirmed to me that these numbers will be very small, and that children they see high rates of congenital abnormalities and premature births in Gaza.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence, even without statistics, is the report of a Palestinian doctor, Mimi Sayed in 2024, that a large number of children were arriving with multiple bullet wounds that suggested deliberate targeting, and that others were showing the symptoms of malnutrition more typical of a concentration camp.

Of course, Gaza is not the only place where children suffer in war, but according to Save the Children, it is currently the most dangerous place in the world for children, and in 2023 in three weeks as many children were killed in Gaza as in the previous three years globally in wars.

Wars do not only harm children directly through bombing, but they also suffer from being recruited into armies, being raped, deprived of food and of education, and the psychological scars last for decades. It is believed that almost 10 million children have died in wars just in the last decade. But many more are traumatized, and the effects of PTSD will impact their future families.

And one consequence of this level of trauma will surely be the recruitment of new groups of terrorists to seek revenge on those who damaged them and their people. And in an even longer-term perspective, it may be that the collective trauma of the holocaust is still simmering in the hearts of the Israelis who are now so keen to seek a ‘final solution’ to the ‘Palestinian problem’.

The pariah status of Israel will surely become a moral crisis for Israelis, deprived of their self-image as a country of perennial victims, and upholders of civilized standards, with the ‘most moral army in the world’. And they might also reflect on their relationship with the United States, which has simply handed over the money for decades with no thought for the moral consequences. Israel as a nation has become corrupted by US big money and their desire to maintain their footprint in Western Asia.

 There can be no ‘justice’ for this level of human destruction, where in 10 or 20 years grieving families will tell the press – “well at least we helped to stop it happening again” - only regime change and a new Nuremburg trial for the country’s leaders. Since NATO is not going to intervene against Israel the way it did for Kosovo.

*The question of what is Zionism and whether the Israeli Government is Zionist is discussed in a separate article posted with this one.

This article was first published today on the Prisma Multicultural Newspaper site, where it can be read with images chosen by the editor:

https://theprisma.co.uk/2025/06/16/gaza-the-jewish-prohibition-of-the-slaughter-of-innocents/